Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — ENERGY

Coal Industry Dispute

Mr. Ray Powell: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what recent discussions he has had with the chairman of the National Coal Board regarding the present dispute.

Mr. Canavan: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement about the strike in the coal mining industry.

Mr. Proctor: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the current situation in the coal mining industry.

Mr. Pike: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will now take steps to seek to resolve the present dispute in the coal mining industry.

Mr. Nellist: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the dispute in the coal mining industry.

Mr. Eadie: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the current situation in the mining industry.

Mr. Adley: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the dispute in the coal mining industry.

Mr. Douglas: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a further statement on the current dispute in the coal industry.

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a further statement on the coal mining dispute.

Sir William van Straubenzee: asked the Secretary of State for Energy whether he will make a statement on the current dispute in the coal industry.

Mr. Dormand: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the latest position in the coal mining industry dispute.

The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Peter Walker): I have had frequent discussions with the chairman of the National Coal Board upon the many problems facing the industry as a result of the unnecessary industrial action taken by some sections of the NUM.
This morning, of the 174 pits, there were only 13 without men present. Coal production was substantially increased, particularly in Scotland, Yorkshire, the north-east and north Derbyshire.
During the 19 working days of 1985, more than 10,000 further miners have returned to work.
Coal stocks at the power stations have remained at a very high level. The CEGB has reiterated its assurance that with present coal stocks and supplies there will be no power cuts due to coal shortages during 1985.
Fifty-two coal faces, including 30 working faces, have been lost since the start of the dispute.
Tomorrow, officials of the National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers will meet to establish whether talks can be restarted.
The Government hope that, with the National Coal Board having offered a substantial investment programme, good pay for miners, a closure procedure better from the miners' point of view than any previous closure procedures, generous early retirement provisions and substantial resources to bring new enterprises and business


to mining communities, the damaging industrial action which has taken place without a ballot will swiftly be ended by a negotiated settlement.

Mr. Powell: As the dove in a Cabinet of hawks, will the Secretary of State ensure that the eagle does not get her claws on tomorrow's talks about talks? Will he also give serious consideration to the termination of the contract of Ian MacGregor as chairman of the National Coal Board? He has caused the most disruption in the industry for 11 of the 17 months since he was appointed chairman. The strike was initiated by him and the Government.

Mr. Walker: There have been seven rounds of talks, and we know the eagle that has done the damage to every one of those rounds. It certainly has not been Mr. MacGregor, who has made an offer to miners which is better than any offer since nationalisation. He has offered better closure procedures, a bigger capital investment programme and the first ever guarantee that there will be no compulsory redundancies. It is a great tragedy for the industry that, without a ballot, the dispute has taken place.

Mr. Canavan: As it has been part of the Secretary of State's propaganda all along that no miner who wanted to remain in the industry would be forced out of his job, will the right hon. Gentleman repeat that guarantee and extend it to the 500 striking miners who have been sacked during the dispute? If the Thatcherite hawks are really looking for blood and for heads to roll, would it not be better to roll in the plastic bag the head of the person whose political appointment provoked the most damaging and longest strike in British industrial history, at a cost of more than £2·5 billion to the taxpayer?

Mr. Walker: A great deal of blood has been lost in this dispute by violent picketing of the worst sort. Judgments on whether people should be sacked are matters for the National Coal Board; but, with any employer in this country, people who commit criminal acts cannot expect to continue to be employed afterwards.

Mr. Proctor: rose—

Mr. Skinner: A failed banker.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Skinner: A unit trust man.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must tell the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) that if he persists in this behaviour, it will be unfortunate for him.

Mr. Skinner: We know the score.

Mr. Proctor: In what appear to be the closing stages of this dispute, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government's attitude will not be in any spirit of revenge or victimisation, but, rather, of looking to the future for the achievement of an efficient, productive and profitable coal industry as soon as possible?

Mr. Walker: Yes, Sir. The first objective should be to get an agreed settlement as swiftly as possible, and thereafter to concentrate on getting a united industry with united mining communities, and with the industry advancing so as to take advantage of the considerable prospects that lie before it.

Mr. Pike: Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that, for the first time in this dispute, the Government will

play a positive role in trying to resolve it rather than take the negative approach, which they have taken all along and which was shown clearly in last week's statement by the Prime Minister, when she revealed that she was after not just victory but crushing the NUM? May we be assured that the Government's attitude will now be positive?

Mr. Walker: There cannot have been a more positive approach than the Government's willingness to put in thousands of millions of pounds for a capital investment programme, hundreds of millions of pounds to guarantee no compulsory unemployment, a good pay offer and, for the first time, a new enterprise company designed to bring new businesses to mining communities. Throughout, therefore, the Government have been totally positive.

Mr. Eadie: As the right hon. Gentleman has given a resume of the history of the negotiations, will he bear in mind, on the eve of talks about talks, that this dispute could have been settled on three occasions had there not been Government intervention? May we be assured that there will not be Government intervention tomorrow? We have had enough of what one might call the fingerprints and riding boots involvement of the Government. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the way to end this dispute is for the NCB and NUM to reach agreement in principle for an honourable settlement without the involvement of a third party, by which I mean the Government?

Mr. Walker: The hon. Gentleman understates the number of times when there could have been a settlement of the dispute. There could have been a settlement on 6 March if a ballot had been taken by the NUM. On seven occasions since then it could have been settled, and it certainly could have been settled at ACAS when it put forward a compromise proposal. One man has always stopped a settlement being reached.

Mr. Adley: Further to the last point made by my right hon. Friend, has not one of the saddest features of this whole dispute been the cowardice shown by the Leader of the Opposition, who failed at the beginning of the strike to call for a ballot—[Interruption.]—bearing in mind that, if a ballot had taken place, that would have avoided the necessity for the Leader of the Opposition to hurl insults at the Prime Minister and would probably have avoided the strike?

Mr. Walker: It is true that when the dispute started one third of Britain's coalfields decided, in the normal tradition of the NUM, to have a ballot, and they balloted nearly 70 per cent. against strike action. It is also true that when Mr. Scargill changed the rules of the NUM on balloting the Leader of the Opposition said that it brought a ballot nearer. Never since then has he urged the NUM to have a ballot, and that has been a great pity.

Mr. Douglas: Will the right hon. Gentleman reflect a little on what he said today in answer to supplementary questions, particularly about the unity of mining communities? Does he accept that those, like myself, who represent mining communities, particularly in Fife, realise that a vital factor in maintaining cohesion is the need to remember that if men come out together, they go back together? That means that any dismissal action on the part of the NCB must be a matter for discussion between the NCB and the NUM, and that the Government must keep their mouth shut about the dismissal of people or having


them remain outside the industry because of activities on the picket line. In other words, is the Secretary of State aware that this is a matter between the union and the NCB and that it should be settled by discussion on that basis? May we be assured that on that issue there will be no interference by the Government?

Mr. Walker: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is for the employer in any organisation, including a nationalised industry, to decide whether he does or does not sack an individual employee, and that employer has the same right as any other employer to consider criminal actions.

Mr. Hamilton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a large number of Opposition Members have had the greatest of reservations about Mr. Scargill's behaviour and tactics since the beginning of this operation? Do the Government understand that there is a bright future for the industry, but that the miners have deep fears about that future? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the Prime Minister to treat these problems and grievances with much greater generosity and understanding than she has hitherto shown?

Mr. Walker: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the mining industry has a good and real future. It requires high investment and a sense of unity in the mining industry and communities. The Government over which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister presides have been willing to allocate enormous resources of public expenditure to ensure that that takes place. I regret the fact that during the last year that did not happen.

Sir William van Straubenzee: Since it has been necessary throughout this dispute to distinguish clearly between the mining community and the mining leadership, would it not be in the interests of the mining community and of getting the industry to work together again if the return to work were gentle, gradual and slow? That action would make the assimilation a little easier than it might otherwise be. Will my right hon. Friend therefore not necessarily be in too great a hurry to achieve a settlement?

Mr. Walker: I am in a hurry to achieve a sensible settlement because I believe that this dispute continues to cause tremendous hardship in mining communities, takes away potential markets and loses investment that could otherwise take place. One of the encouraging features of the past few months has been the fact that, in a number of areas in which a substantial proportion of the men have returned to work, fears of divisiveness and ill feeling in the pits did not occur to the degree expected. I hope, therefore, that if there is a speedy settlement there will be a quick sense of unity within this industry.

Mr. Dormand: Will the Secretary of State bear in mind that, although some miners have returned to work, thousands are prepared to stay on strike for a long time yet and that that—this is the important point—shows their determination to protect their jobs? When will the Government, and the Secretary of State in particular, take seriously the provision of new jobs in mining areas? Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that the £5 million about which he keeps talking is piffling compared with the amount the miners would need if the Government's pit closure programme got under way?

Mr Walker: I understand the hon. Gentleman's anxiety. We set up the enterprise company with a capital of £5 million. The number of applications and inquiries

during the first few weeks were very encouraging. Therefore, I immediately agreed to double the capital to £10 million. I made it clear at that time that we were imposing a £10 million limit and would review the amount required, depending upon the type of action that we could take. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I place great importance on that company's activities. There is not a £5 million limit. I have now made £10 million available, and that is not the the limit.

Mr. Andy Stewart: With expulsion hanging over the heads of the Nottinghamshire NUM members, if a democratic union has to be set up, will my right hon. Friend endorse the recognition of that union by the National Coal Board?

Mr. Walker: I do not believe at this stage that there is any point in suggesting what might occur in certain circumstances. All I can say is that during this dispute the Nottinghamshire miners have never had a desire to split off from the NUM. Their recent attitude has been affected not by their actions but by the actions of Mr. Scargill and the executive. I notice that the delegate conference that was to be held has now been put off. There is no point in speculating about what might happen in certain events.

Mr. Howard: Is there not already in existence an honourable agreement affecting matters at the heart of this dispute? Why should what was an honourable agreement for NACODS not be an honourable agreement for the leadership of the NUM?

Mr. Walker: That is interesting. I have heard no criticism from the Labour party leadership, the TUC or any other bodies of the NACODS agreement, which provides procedures for closures better than those the NUM has enjoyed under any previous Government. It has provided, as ACAS pointed out, an honourable settlement of the dispute.

Mr. Mason: Will the Secretary of State make representations to the National Coal Board, on behalf of miners who have been arrested on the picket line but not charged, to ensure that their future will not be impaired by the board? He should express the hope that there will be no victim.
Secondly, did the Prime Minister make her views known to the chairman of the National Coal Board when she stated that she expected a written guarantee from the NUM leadership that uneconomic closures should be on the negotiating list before any real talks could take place?

Mr. Walker: On the last point, the NCB issued a statement to that effect because, during the dispute, there have been seven rounds of talks during which the leader of the NUM has boasted that he has not moved and inch since March. Understandably, it wanted to ensure that these talks would be held on a constructive basis, where progress could be made.
On the first point, I shall convey to the NCB the views expressed by the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Rost: Does not section 6 of the Coal Industry Act 1977 specifically allow the Secretary of State to make further grants to assist the elimination of uneconomic colliery capacity, and was not the then Secretary of State the now discredited right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn)?

Mr. Walker: I am not sure when he was discredited, but it is true that those words were used in the legislation when the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) was Secretary of State.

Mr. Benn: Is the Secretary of State aware that the most significant part of his first answer was that he made no reference whatever to Government insistence that the NUM should agree in advance to the closure of uneconomic pits, despite the briefing from Bernard Ingham to all the press? Are not signs of the Secretary of State's recognition of the strength of the NUM that more than 140,000 employees are still on strike, that the pound is at its lowest level ever, that there is an increase in interest rates of 2 per cent., and that share values have fallen 30 points today? Have not the Government a strong interest in reaching agreement with the NUM? If not, NUM members on strike will not be prepared to return to work to see the butchery of their industry.

Mr. Walker: On the subject of uneconomic pits and the butchery of the industry, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, during the period that he was—

Mr. Benn: Answer the question.

Mr. Walker: I am answering the question.

Mr. Benn: Answer the question.

Mr. Walker: The right hon. Gentleman will not like the answer. During that period 17,000 miners took voluntary redundancy on terms much worse than those offered at the moment. In 1978, one pit that he closed had 1·5 million tonnes of reserves and another had three to four years' reserves. Throughout this dispute the right hon. Gentleman has made wrong predictions at the expense of miners.

Mr. Sackville: Will my right hon. Friend take steps to preserve jobs in energy intensive industries by ensuring that such industries do not bear a disproportionate part of the costs of the dispute?

Mr. Walker: The cost of the dispute will depend on coal stocks and the need to restock at the end of the dispute. There are still substantial coal stocks at the collieries and the power stations. They are about three times what the Opposition predicted they would be. For those reasons, it is very difficult to calculate what the cost will be.

Mr. Meadowcroft: Whatever the terms on which the dispute is settled, there can be no victors. What is the right hon. Gentleman doing to inhibit his right hon. and hon. Friends from crowing over what they believe to be a victory—which is perhaps the most crass and insensitive behaviour of recent days?

Mr. Walker: I know of none of my hon. Friends who have crowed over a victory. I agree that considerable damage has been done to the industry, the miners and the economy by a totally unnecessary dispute. The important thing is to end the dispute as quickly as possible.

Mr. Gerald Howarth: My right hon. Friend has graphically made clear the generosity of the NCB's offer, which is the envy of industries throughout the country. Would it not be a betrayal of the miners whom I represent and who have consistently gone to work if further concessions were to be made beyond those agreed with NACODS?

Mr. Walker: Yes. We should constantly remind the House that miners in my hon. Friend's constituency and in similar constituencies followed the normal traditions of the NUM by holding a ballot, and they balloted overwhelmingly, at the beginning of the dispute, not to strike. They did so because of the generosity of the offer then available. That has been the reality of the dispute from beginning to end.

Mr. Barron: The NACODS settlement has been much talked about this afternoon. Is it not true that NACODS, after hearing statements by the right hon. Gentleman and by the Prime Minister, is saying that its settlement has been put under tremendous pressure and that at present, because of what the NCB is doing, it is not prepared to sit down with Mr. MacGregor? Is not the NACODS settlement in some doubt?

Mr. Walker: The NACODS settlement is in no doubt. If the NUM wishes to accept it tomorrow, it can do so.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Is it not true that very few people wish for an unconditional surrender by either side in the dispute? Is it not also true that, bearing in mind the cost to the country and the cost in other people's jobs lost because of the dispute, no agreement should be reached that does not accept the closure of pits that have outlived their useful economic life? Only the coal miners would gain by such an agreement. Everyone else would lose.

Mr. Walker: Throughout the history of British coal mining, uneconomic pits have always been closed. Throughout every coal mining industry in the world, such pits have been closed. It is not in the interests of miners that money should be poured into pits that have no long-term future of any description when it could be invested in the future of the industry. The issue that has kept this unfortunate conflict going has always been entirely bogus.

Mr. Allen McKay: Does the Secretary of State not realise that the strike started because of a lack of trust in the chairman of the NCB, and that that trust must now be regained? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should not interfere in or comment on the present delicate stage of negotiations? Does he further agree that during the past 11 months the Government have failed to provide time to debate the whole issue? Should they not have given the House a chance to discuss the situation and to highlight some of the matters which the right hon. Gentleman believes to be beneficial?

Mr. Walker: The reason for the dispute was very clear. The conflict started on a wrong issue and without a ballot. Mr. MacGregor put forward terms, and if there had been a ballot there would not have been a strike. As a well-known wet on such matters, when I discovered that the Leader of the Opposition felt that a debate would be embarrassing for the Opposition, I naturally felt for him.

Mr. Terlezki: Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that when this political strike is over—let us hope that it will be over sooner rather than later—all the miners who have worked and kept the industry going, despite intimidation and threats, will come to no harm?

Mr. Walker: Yes.

Mr. Wrigglesworth: Does the Secretary of State agree that if the NUM is now seeing the economic facts of life, a settlement of the dispute can bring about a long-term and successful future for the industry? In regard to political


interference, what role has Mr. David Hart played in relationships between the Government and the Coal Board? Has he liaised between 10 Downing street and the Prime Minister and the NCB?

Mr. Walker: No, Sir. As far as I know I have never met Mr. Hart.

Mr. John Townend: Will my right hon. Friend convey to the chairman of the NCB the message that the overwhelming view of Conservative Members is that under no circumstances should miners who are dismissed for violence and for causing damage be reinstated?

Mr. Walker: Sackings and reinstatements are matters for the employers to consider. I am sure that, like all employers, the NCB must take into consideration the criminal actions of any of its employees or former employees.

Mr. Redmond: Does the Secretary of State agree that he knows nothing about industrial relation? Will he assure us that, in the next two weeks, he will find time to learn a little something about industrial relations and, having that little knowledge, will avoid any repetitions of the dispute?

Mr. Walker: I always listen to the wise, shrewd and well-informed words of the hon. Gentleman with great interest. I noted every word.

Mr. Andrew MacKay: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it could not possibly be in the interests of the maintenance of the rule of law in Britain if those who have been convicted of serious criminal offences during the dispute were to be reinstated?

Mr. Walker: Yes. The NCB must take the same view as any other employer towards people who have committed grave criminal offences.

Mr. Lofthouse: When the Secretary of State next meets the chairman of the NCB, will he discuss the board's decision to discontinue its interest and investment in putting a drift mine down in my constituency, which would have coupled up Wheldale, Fryston and Glass Houghton collieries and given them a longer life? As 42 per cent. of all under-25s in my constituency are unemployed, and as they would normally have gone into the coal industry, if the Secretary of State fails to discuss that matter with the chairman of the NCB, will he advise them what employment prospects young men in mining communities can expect when pits are closed?

Mr. Walker: I shall convey the hon. Gentleman's views to the chairman of the NCB, but I cannot comment on any specific proposal. I am glad to say that, for any area where there are pit closures, for whatever reason, we have brought into operation an important company to assist in getting further businesses and enterprises into those areas.

Mr. Nicholls: Now that the inevitable bleating has started about allowing the NUM to cave in with dignity, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that there was no dignity for miners when they were defrauded of their right to a pre-strike ballot, that there was no dignity for policemen who were beaten up on the picket line and that there was no dignity for the families of working miners who were terrorised? Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that those factors will have to be reflected in any agreement that emerges?

Mr. Walker: There are many miners throughout the country who are also reflecting on those facts.

Mr. Welsh: The Secretary of State is aware that, since nationalisation, it has been the role of Ministers with responsibility for energy, and of other Ministers with responsibility for other nationalised industries, to hold the ring so that management and unions can discuss things and reach amicable agreements. In the past few months the Government and the NCB have been "two-oneing" the NUM. It is time that that finished. May we have an assurance that, if negotiations are entered into this week, the Secretary of State will go back to holding the ring and let the NCB and the NUM thrash it out and get an acceptable and amicable agreement?

Mr. Walker: In all previous arrangements Governments might well have been willing to produce the necessary finance to get a sensible agreement, but they have also always been dealing with someone who was willing to put up sensible proposals. In this dispute, seven times—on one occasion with ACAS holding the ring—the NUM leadership, against the wishes of all of the miners who voted, has gone on with this utterly unnecessary industrial action.

Mr. Leigh: In the light of the fact that this morning many miners were clearly dissuaded from returning to work because of the pending negotiations, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is vital that at an early stage in the talks about talks the NUM accepts that pits should be closed because they are uneconomic, lest Arthur Scargill is given a further opportunity to prolong negotiations indefinitely, thus stemming the return to work and prolonging the strike?

Mr. Walker: Today's return-to-work figures are interesting. On the morning shift alone 840 people returned to work, which is an extremely high figure and in sharp contrast to all previous figures when talks were pending. The message to Mr. Scargill must be that by far the biggest return was in Yorkshire.

Mr. Beggs: Does the Secretary of State accept that the dispute is resulting in higher costs to consumers in Northern Ireland? Does he agree that if the dispute could be settled at an early date a decision could be made to convert Northern Ireland power stations from oil to coal, thereby securing future jobs for miners?

Mr. Walker: That is one of many examples of missed opportunities this year. In 1984 I had hoped that 1,000 firms would convert to coal. Alas, many firms which converted to coal are considering converting back to oil or gas. That is a great tragedy for the industry.

Mr. Eggar: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that when the dispute is over the Government will continue to invest in the coal industry to ensure that it is competitive, supplies energy at competitive prices and provides longterm jobs for miners?

Mr. Walker: With the quality of mining machinery and coal seams that we have, the coal industry has a good opportunity for years to come. It is the Government's great desire that the industry takes advantage of that opportunity.

Mrs. Clwyd: Is the Secretary of State aware that 18 fewer miners returned to work in south Wales today? I am sure that he will want to join me in congratulating them


on their solidarity and determination. Does he not recognise by now that those miners will not return to work until a proper, honourable and negotiated settlement takes place, which recognises the social and economic arguments for keeping pits open?

Mr. Walker: I know that the hon. Lady read that on the tape this morning. However, the number of miners working in south Wales is substantially higher than it was last Monday.

Mr. Holt: In the light of the comments this afternoon and the feelings throughout the country, does my right hon. Friend agree that if the 5,000 miners who have been found guilty of criminal offences were given the opportunity to go to industrial tribunals and claim unfair dismissal it would be time-consuming, a waste of public money and totally unnecessary?

Mr. Walker: I cannot interfere with the legal rights of individuals regarding industrial tribunals. Obviously, the NCB must be free to treat people who have committed criminal actions against its personnel and property as it considers fit.

Mr. Corbyn: Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to state how many power cuts or voltage reductions have taken place throughout England, Wales and Scotland because of the mining dispute? Will he ask the chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board to give an accurate description of the cuts that have taken place as a result of the dispute, rather than always blame them on cable failures? Will the Secretary of State give the House an estimate of the increased cost of coal and oil imported to break the mining dispute? Will he comment on the story that appeared in The Guardian of today?

Mr. Walker: I read something in The Guardian last week that was totally wrong. Voltage reductions take place every year irrespective of power stocks, and there are normally about three a year. The last figure that I have shows that there has been one so far this year. We have plenty of stocks at power stations, and in 1985 there will not be any power cuts as a result of the present level of coal stocks.

Mr. Orme: Is the Secretary of State aware that we want to see a negotiated settlement that is acceptable both to the NUM and the NCB? In that regard, will he deplore the article in The Times of last Saturday, written by Mr. David Hart, who is an adviser at No. 10. He said:
The time for a negotiated settlement is past.
Does the Secretary of State agree with that?

Mr. Walker: The right hon. Gentleman should withdraw that. Mr. Hart is not an adviser at No. 10. The view of the Government, and certainly that of the Prime Minister, is that not only do we want a negotiated settlement, but that we believed that when ACAS intervened we would have a negotiated settlement.

Mr. Yeo: asked the Secretary of State for Energy how many employees of the National Coal Board are currently at work.

Mr. Fallon: asked the Secretary of State for Energy how many miners are currently working.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Hunt): I understand from the National Coal Board that today more than half of its

employees are no longer on strike, of whom nearly 79,000 are members of the NUM, representing 42 per cent. of its membership.

Mr. Yeo: Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the courage and loyalty of those miners who have voted with their feet during the past 10 months? Is he aware that there would be widespread and fully justified outrage in the country if miners who were dismissed for engaging in criminal conduct were accepted back into the employment of the National Coal Board?

Mr. Hunt: My hon. Friend's second point would be a matter for the NCB. As to his main point, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I use every opportunity to pay tribute to the courage and determination of those who have returned to work, often in the face of mob intimidation and violence.

Mr. Fallon: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the seven men taken back this morning by the Coal Board in the north-east have not been reinstated but re-employed? Does he agree that it would be wrong to expect working miners to work alongside those convicted of serious criminal offences?

Mr. Hunt: That is a very fair point, and I shall draw the views of my hon. Friend and others to the attention of the chairman of the National Coal Board.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. In the interests of balance, I shall call two hon. Members from the Opposition.

Mr. Ryman: With respect to the reinstatement of NUM members who have been on strike, is it not utterly unfair for the Government to attempt to influence the chairman and area directors of the NCB when, for 10 months, the Government have flatly refused to intervene in this most serious industrial dispute?

Mr. Hunt: On the hon. Gentleman's first point, no, it is not unfair. On his second point, the Government intervened at the start of the dispute by underwriting the best offer made to miners since nationalisation.

Mr. Strang: Does the Minister accept that the international competitiveness of coal has been transformed by the fact that although the pound-dollar rate was 1·48 when the strike started, it is now 1·11? Why does he not tell the Coal Board to press ahead and take advantage of the new export markets instead of trying to implement a closure programme for which there was never any economic justification and which is now completely outdated?

Mr. Hunt: International markets depend upon the international competitiveness of British coal. That is why it was made clear at the beginning of the dispute to all those working in the industry that they had been offered the best possible deal for an expanding, competitive coal industry. Sadly, much of the momentum has been lost.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSE OF COMMONS

Accommodation

Mr. Dormand: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a statement on the progress being made in providing additional office accommodation for hon. Members.

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): In accordance with the design brief given to the architects in the Services Committee's third report of 1983–84, the design team has developed preliminary sketch plans for phase 1 of the new parliamentary building. These plans are now under consideration by the Services Committee's New Building Sub-Committee.

Mr. Dormand: Does the Leader of the House realise that the aspect of the matter that still puzzles most hon. Members is the time that it will take before the new offices are occupied? In those circumstances, will he give assurances that he will ignore the strident voices of some of his hon. Friends who want the development to be cancelled, and that there will be no reduction in the moneys already allocated for the work? What progress is being made in transferring staff from the Palace so that their accommodation can be made available to hon. Members?

Mr. Biffen: I do not belive that there is any likelihood of this project being cancelled. I shall see what can be done to ensure that the execution of the work proceeds according to the budgeted time scales and with the appropriate finance. To date, it is up with the forecast. As for the movement of staff from the Palace so that more places are made available for hon. Members, those numbers have already been given. I shall look into exactly what changes have taken place to date.

Mr. Dykes: After so much time has elapsed, is it not desirable that at long last we should provide better accommodation for visiting European parliamentarians — [Interruption.] — as do many other national Parliaments?

Mr. Biffen: That interesting and perceptive question goes somewhat wider than the question of the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand). I should have thought that the good-natured response to it shows that it is a matter of some delicacy.

Mr. Meadowcroft: Has the right hon. Gentleman ever investigated the possibility of providing some distance away from the House extra accommodation for research assistants? Although this is not an ideal solution, if the right hon. Gentleman has not carried out such an investigation, will he please do so?

Mr. Biffen: The Select Committee on House of Commons (Services) is looking at the main proposition that it would be appropriate that the Palace should be, as it were, repossessed by hon. Members, but if that were to take place I hope that hon. Members would not then complain that they were some distance away from their beloved research assistants.

Souvenir Kiosk

Mr. Greenway: asked the Lord Privy Seal what were the takings at the souvenir kiosk in the latest year for which statistics are available; what were the takings in the four weeks to 24 December; what plans he has for the future of the kiosk; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Biffen: The takings in the four-week period and the 12-month period to 21 December 1984 were £146,073 and £414,869 respectively. These figures include VAT.

The Refreshment Department regularly reviews the range of products on sale at the kiosk, but there are no immediate plans for major developments.

Mr. Greenway: Will my right hon. Friend please convey the thanks of all hon. Members to Jean and Joe for their excellent service? Do not the remarkable figures that my right hon. Friend has given show that already there is a sufficiently wide range of goods on sale to attract enormous custom and satisfy hon. Members and visitors? Would it not be wholly wrong to set up a new supermarket in Westminster Hall selling anything from House of Commons champagne to parliamentary tinsel?

Mr. Biffen: The safest thing that I can do is to say to my hon. Friend that I shall convey those sentiments to the Catering Sub-Committee.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Does the Lord Privy Seal share my hope that it will be found possible to dispense with this eyesore, which is derogatory to the dignity of the House?

Mr. Biffen: I noted the comments of the right hon. Gentleman on 30 January 1984, when I took good care to hide behind the skirts of my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Shepherd). All I can say is that, again, I shall refer the comments of the right hon. Member to the Catering Sub-Committee.

Mr. McQuarrie: Will my right hon. Friend take note of the fact that, while the figures for sales that he has given are very satisfactory, there is a distinct absence of many items in the kiosks during the busiest parts of the parliamentary Session—in July and again at Christmas? Will my right hon. Friend take steps to ensure that adequate stocks are held during these busy periods so that hon. Members can obtain supplies for their constituents?

Mr. Biffen: I shall most certainly ensure that that point is further considered.

Mr. Heffer: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that during the period of the English revolution, when Parliament operated as a Parliament against the King, political pamphlets of various kinds were sold in Westminster Hall? Would it not be a good idea to return to that position instead of tolerating the present nonsense?

Mr. Biffen: Political pamphlets are normally pretty slow-moving stock. I am sure that in many parts of the House there will be sympathetic consideration of that viewpoint.

Mr. Heffer: They would not read the right hon. Gentleman's.

Mr. Biffen: No. I am not such a fool as to write them.

Statutory Instruments

Mr. Beith: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he is satisfied with the present arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny of statutory instruments.

Mr. Biffen: I believe the present arrangements to be generally acceptable to hon. Members.

Mr. Beith: Does the Leader of the House recognise that in the time that he has been a Member of the House the amount of law made by statutory instruments has been increased dramatically and that the right of the House to debate and vote upon those statutory instruments has been


reduced dramatically? Would not the right hon. Gentleman like to be the Leader of the House who went down in history as the one who reversed both those trends by ensuring that the House took control of the making of law by statute?

Mr. Biffen: That is an interesting proposition, but, for example, as long as we have our present arrangements with the EC a growing body of our law will be made that way. Of course, I shall always look sympathetically at any suggestions that are made to improve upon present conditions.

Mr. Madden: Will the Leader of the House give an assurance that the Government will not in future adopt the procedure that was adopted when they introduced a charge for entry clearance certificates, which denied the House any opportunity to debate the matter? Indeed, the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments was also denied an opportunity to consider the introduction of that charge.

Mr. Biffen: In view of the parent legislation under which action was taken, what proceeded was entirely defensible, but I take at once the hon. Gentleman's point.

Parliamentary Proceedings (Televised Broadcasting)

Mr. Canavan: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will arrange for the House to have an opportunity of debating and voting on televised broadcasting of the proceedings of the House.

Mr. Biffen: Members will wish to take account of the experience in another place before deciding upon a further debate on the televised broadcasting of proceedings of this House.

Mr. Canavan: Is it not a poor reflection on the House of Commons that even the non-elected geriatric House of Lords is seen as more of an open House than this comparatively exclusive club? If this place really is the people's Parliament, why should the people not be allowed to see just what exactly their elected representatives are getting up to? Or are the Government afraid of more publicity being given to ex-Tory Prime Ministers who expose the disastrous policies of this discredited Government?

Mr. Biffen: Ignoring the commercials and addressing myself to the substance of the question, I say to the hon. Gentleman that this is clearly a House of Commons matter and I think that the House will wish to proceed by taking account of the experiment now being undertaken in another place.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: Will my right hon. Friend take note that many of my hon. Friends do not want a debate on the possible televising of this House, and, indeed, do not want to see their House televised at all?

Mr. Biffen: Of course I take note of that view, knowing as I do that the most rich variety of opinions will be expressed on this topic.

Dr. Owen: Will the Leader of the House give a commitment that he will definitely arrange for a debate once the experiment is over in the House of Lords and not just leave it in this rather vague way? The House deserves to know that there will be a debate.

Mr. Biffen: Yes, the right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. The House will wish to consider the matter further and I hope that I shall be in a position to offer time when the occasion arises.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Will my right hon. Friend take due note of the attendance of the Lords spiritual and temporal once the novelty has worn off? There seemed to be a remarkably large attendance on the first day. It will be interesting to see how many attend from now on.

Mr. Biffen: I am sure that many in this House will monitor exactly what is happening in the other place.

Mr. Shore: If the House is to take account, as I suspect it will wish to, of the experiment in the other place, would it not be sensible if some arrangement were made whereby the Select Committee on Sound Broadcasting of this place was able to join the similar body in the other place to scrutinise and monitor the experiment?

Mr. Biffen: I suspect that that already falls within the ambit of the Committee, but I shall look at that constructive point further.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL SERVICE

Post Office Counter Services

Mr. Spearing: asked the Minister for the Civil Service what plans he has for maintaining or increasing the use made by Government Departments of the counter services of the Post Office.

The Minister of State, Treasury (Mr. Barney Hayhoe): Decisions about the use of post office counter services are not made centrally, but by the Department concerned, which, of course, seeks cost-effective and sensible ways of meeting its requirements.

Mr. Spearing: In view of the fact that the Government are committed to a comprehensive network of counter services, and bearing in mind that some transactions are inevitably more costly than others, is there not an obligation on the Government to ensure that the viability of the present network is not undermined? Therefore, is it not right that the Government should prevent the peeling off by individual Departments of individual transactions which may be convenient to them but which result in complete inconvenience to the public?

Mr. Hayhoe: That may well be a matter for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I know that she has answered questions from the hon. Gentleman on that score. It is not a matter that falls within the responsibilities of the Management and Personnel Office.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: Is my hon. Friend aware that the DHSS is charged up to 38p per Girocheque passed over the post office counter? We in the House are always concerned about the gross extravagance and expense of such charges. Will my hon. Friend encourage all Government Departments to have bank accounts instead of using post office counter services?

Mr. Hayhoe: As I said just now, it is for Departments to seek cost-effective and sensible ways of meeting their requirements. My hon. Friend should address that question to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services.

Consultancy Inspection Review Services

Mr. Eggar: asked the Minister for the Civil Service what representations he has received about the consultancy inspection review services in Government Departments.

Mr. Hayhoe: This efficiency unit report to the Prime Minister has been widely welcomed and more than 7,000 copies of the unit's briefing note on the report, called "Helping Managers Manage" are being distributed by Departments to their managers.

Mr. Eggar: Has my hon. Friend noted press speculation that the Government now attach less priority to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Civil Service than they once did? Is that the case? Can my hon. Friend confirm that the recommendations of the report will be implemented?

Mr. Hayhoe: There was a report in the Financial Times on 4 January, the headline of which talked of the efficiency drive in the Civil Service "faltering". However, the headline did not reflect the contents of the article. Those of us who follow the work of sub-editors in putting headlines to stories know that that is not unusual. I can assure my hon. Friend that the efficiency drive is not faltering. The recommendations of the report will be followed through.

Mr. Dalyell: Will the Minister undertake to find out which Government Departments have placed contracts with Zeus Security consultants and other private detective agencies?

Mr. Hayhoe: I shall make inquiries and write to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Winnick: Is it intended that the review service will look into the ban on trade unions at GCHQ? Did the hon. Gentleman note, on the first anniversary of the ban, the huge demonstrations and protests? Is it not time that the ban on trade unions at GCHQ was lifted.

Mr. Hayhoe: I admire the ingenuity of the hon. Gentleman in getting in that supplementary question on this question. It has nothing to do with it. As the hon. Gentleman should know by now, matters concerning GCHQ are the responsibility of my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary.

Mr. Soley: Are there not growing complaints from the public about the deteriorating quality of service from the Civil Service? Is not this a cost-cutting exercise designed to reduce staff numbers? Is not that resulting in a lower quality of service generally and, therefore, in false economies?

Mr. Hayhoe: It is apparent from that supplementary question that the hon. Gentleman has not read the report to which the main question refers.

Mr. Skinner: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Prime Minister has a bit of a cheek to talk about an efficiency drive in all the other Government Departments, bearing in mind that according to a question answered by her only a few days ago it transpires that the cost of running her office at No. 10 Downing street has gone up by more than 100 per cent. since she became Prime Minister? Is it not a fact that, despite this efficiency drive, she is spending money like water to spy on everyone else?

Mr. Hayhoe: No, it is not a fact. If anyone in the House has cheek, it is the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).

Dr. McDonald: Is the Minister aware that the financial management initiative has failed in its objective of tightening up Whitehall management and saving money and that the new consultative document "Helping Managers Manage" has merely added to the confusion? Is he aware, further, that no consultancy service can help the Government achieve their objectives so long as the Government sustain their attack on Civil Service numbers, opportunities for promotion and the level of pay and fail to resolve the bitter resentment about the trade union ban at GCHQ?

Mr. Hayhoe: The hon. Lady is wrong on every single premise of that question — absolutely wrong on every count.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSE OF COMMONS

Dining Rooms (Smoking Ban)

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will initiate an inquiry into the desirability of prohibiting smoking in all dining room places within the precincts.

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): No, Sir. I am not aware of any widespread demand in the House for a change in present arrangements.

Mr. Hamilton: Does the Minister recognise that there are ample facilities for smokers other than in the Dining Rooms? Does he further recognise that there is considerable inconvenience for non-smokers who have to sit beside smokers in the Dining Rooms? Will he treat the matter a little more seriously than he appears to be doing?

Mr. Biffen: I am happy to treat the matter seriously, because I understand how the hon. Gentleman feels. However, it is a matter for the Catering Sub-Committee, and I shall refer the hon. Gentleman's point to it.

Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Should we not, in fact, have reverted to energy questions?

Mr. Speaker: Having dealt with Civil Service questions, we revert to the questions immediately before them. If we had run out of those, we would have reverted to energy questions.

Mr. Yeo: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I draw your attention to the fact that no fewer than 11 questions were bracketed with question No. 1 this afternoon. As a result, question No. 2 was not reached until nine minutes past 3 o'clock. Can you persuade Ministers to exercise some degree of restraint in the number of questions that are bracketed together so that we do not again have a similar position to today, when question No. 18 was answered but five questions standing higher on the Order Paper were not answered?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman's question, No. 2, was reached, so I do not think that he has any cause for complaint.
I judged that it was the wish of the House today to give a fair run to question No. 1, which is a matter of major


importance. I apologise to hon. Members whose questions were not reached, although I think that they will understand the special position arising today.

Frigates (Orders)

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Michael Heseltine): As the House knows, I have been considering the results of a tendering exercise for two type 22 frigates for the Royal Navy. Cammell Laird, Swan Hunter and Vosper Thornycroft were each invited to tender for these warships—one, the fourth replacement for warships lost in the South Atlantic, and the other an addition to the naval programme which I authorised in 1983.
The tendering process has been unusually protracted, for several reasons. I have been concerned to obtain the best available prices and tauter contract terms than we have been accustomed to in this area of defence procurement. The earlier tender replies did not adequately contribute to this objective, and it was not possible to take a decision on the order before the validity of the tenders expired. A final round of tendering was initiated in late July last year. The results of this round met several of the concerns to which I have referred, and, as with the earlier rounds, showed that the competition had been close and keenly fought.
The House will be aware that the decision on the orders for the frigates has important implications for each of the competing yards. I have considered the implications carefully, in consultation with my ministerial colleagues.
At this point, I should say that the deplorable and unnecessary industrial action which occurred last summer at Cammell Laird would, as I made clear at the time, had it continued, have excluded the yard from further consideration in the competition. The courage and determination shown by the moderate element of the work force at Cammell Laird, in the face of the intimidatory behaviour of their former work colleagues, has averted the almost certain closure of the yard at an early date.
The cheapest solution from the point of defence procurement would be to place the order for both ships with one yard, but, in the light of the wider and relevant factors involved, I have decided that an order for one type 22 frigate will be placed with Cammell Laird and for the second with Swan Hunter, and I am prepared to authorise the necessary expenditure. This offers the prospect of survival of Cammell Laird as a major warship builder; without such a contract the yard would have closed. I hope that the yard will succeed in obtaining other business in the short as well as the long term.
Swan Hunter, which is a much larger firm and is implementing a large redundancy programme at the moment, could face further substantial redundancies even with the order which I have just announced. The Government wish to do what they reasonably can to prevent this. Last autumn we embarked on the construction of a new class of frigate, the type 23, and negotiated a first order at Yarrow on the Clyde. I have decided to negotiate an order for the second type 23 frigate at Swan Hunter as soon as this can sensibly be done, and subject to satisfactory agreement on price and other contract terms. I will expect the price for this frigate to reflect the economies obtainable with an order for two frigates rather than one; and to be competitive. In order to establish this, tenders will be invited for the third type 23 order in the same time scale from all United Kingdom yards capable of carrying out the work.

Mr. Denzil Davies: The Secretary of State's statement will obviously be welcomed both by the Royal Navy and by the two warship yards which have been given orders to build the three new frigates. It will be welcomed especially because it seems likely that this will be one of the last statements on major equipment orders in defence which the Government will make in this Parliament. From now on it is likely to be cancellations all the way.
The statement has an air of desperation about it. The Secretary of State is desperate because the Treasury will demand, if we read the public expenditure White Paper correctly, larger and larger cuts in defence. He is desperate also because the cost of Trident over the past months has increased by about £200 million a month. For the Secretary of State to talk about "tauter contract terms" is cynical and ridiculous. When are we to see tauter contract terms for Trident, the costs of which have doubled under the Government?
Why was there delay in placing the order, especially for type 22 frigates, the first one of which will be a replacement for the one lost in the Falklands war? Why does the Secretary of State not make it clear that the delay stems from budgetary problems in his Department and not from industrial problems at the yards? What will be the cost of a type 23 frigate? Some of us remember that one of the reasons for closing Chatham dockyard was that type 23 frigates would be disposable vessels and would cost about £70 million. What is the cost of a type 23 frigate now? If the type 23 is not to be disposable after all, is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the Royal Navy, after he and his business partner, Mr. Levene, have finished with it, will have the necessary dockyard facilities to refit the types 22 and 23 and all the other warships of the Royal Navy?

Mr. Heseltine: I suppose that the House will sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman for talking about everything except the subject of the statement. I shall answer the relevant questions that he put to me. The delay of which he spoke has nothing to do with any budgetary problems in my Department. Anyone who has any idea of the considerations that have been brought to this matter will know that. The approximate price of a type 23 frigate now is about £110 million. We shall ensure that there are adequate servicing and repair facilities. Our problem is one of over-supply of facilities, rather than under-supply.
The House will perhaps judge the sincerity of the right hon. Gentleman's contribution to my statement against the background of the Government having increased defence expenditure in real terms by £3 billion a year, while the Labour party was committed to reducing it by a third as soon as it came to power.

Sir Antony Buck: Is my right hon. Friend aware that most of us on the Conservative Benches will welcome his statement, which will certainly end the uncertainty about these matters? When are the type 22s likely to go into service with the Royal Navy? Similarly, when will the type 23s, which will be following thereafter, go into service?

Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. As a rule of thumb, one can broadly assume that an order takes four to five years—probably nearer four years—to complete. That will give my hon. and learned Friend and the House the answer to his question.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Has the Secretary of State seen the statement attributed to Admiral of the Fleet Lord Hill-Norton about a scandal behind the selection procedures for Her Majesty's ships, particularly in relation to the Osprey? Is the Secretary of State confident that these procedures are proper?

Mr. Heseltine: I read the newspaper report this morning and I have asked to be kept fully informed about the matter, but I understand that the story carried in The Times this morning is a very long way from the truth.

Mr. Peter Viggers: My I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the fact that three warship yards—Vosper Thorneycroft, Yarrow and Cammell Laird—are classified as lead warship manufacturers, and, therefore, maintain appropriate design staffs? What implications does my right hon. Friend's policy have for Vosper Thorneycroft, and what expectations can the yard have of further Royal Navy orders?

Mr. Heseltine: I fully understand my hon. Friend's concern. The capacity of Vospers is well known to my Department and the yard will be able to compete for the third type 23 order to which I referred in my statement. Of course, it is competing now for other ships for the Royal Navy.

Mr. Stephen Ross: As it appears that Swan Hunter has not had to tender for the type 23, can the Secretary of State tell us whether the same sort of situation would apply to Vospers, which is a yard with a fine record of achievement, but which now faces heavy redundancies? Can the right hon. Gentleman also tell us the price for the type 22s, following the keen competition for them?

Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman will know that we do not announce the detail of contract prices that have been negotiated in any of the work for the Ministry of Defence. However, broadly speaking, the cost of the type 22—on the same basis as the cost of £110 million that I gave for the type 23—is about £140 million. I am sympathetic about the position of Vospers, but I did not see how I had the capacity easily to help that situation. I very much hope that Vospers is successful in some of the competitive negotiations that it is now undertaking.

Sir David Price: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, after a delay of 16 months, those of us who have Vosper Thorneycroft in our area are very unhappy about his decision? Will he make it a little easier by publishing the rules of tendering, about which there has been considerable doubt—especially on how overheads are spread—and the comparative costs that he received? It has taken so long that most of us have grave doubts about the integrity of my right hon. Friend's tendering procedures.

Mr. Heseltine: I understand my hon. Friend's concern, but I cannot add to what I said. The Ministry does not customarily produce a list of prices at which contracts are awarded or the list of those who have tendered but not won contracts. The position that the Ministry faces is that all three yards are subsidiaries of one company, which is sponsored by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. That company is more likely to lay down the rules under which tendering takes place than is the Ministry.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: As a former senior shop steward at the Cammell Laird shipyard and a

Merseyside Member who has many shipbuilding workers in his constituency, may I tell the right hon. Gentleman that we welcome the decision to have one of the ships built at the Cammell Laird shipyard? That is good news for Merseyside.
However, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it was unneccesary for him to attack the workers at Cammell Laird, who were fighting for jobs—rightly or wrongly? The fact that they fought for jobs and went to prison because of it may have helped to determine that the order announced by the Secretary of State should be brought to Merseyside.

Mr. Frank Field: No.

Mr. Heffer: My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) says "No." That is a matter for him. I have given my opinion. I believe that it is vital that all workers should fight for jobs, because Merseyside has been battered more than any other area in the country.

Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) has put to the House his interpretation of the events that led up to my statement today. I must tell him that he is categorically wrong. Nothing was more likely to close Cammell Laird than the action of those who occupied HMS Edinburgh, which is under contract to the Ministry. The idea that any Secretary of State for Defence would place another order with a shipyard that was occupying a ship under construction is unthinkable, and I said so at the time. The men who must be praised are those who have crossed the picket lines against the abuse and intimidation of a wholly unrepresentative minority. That minority has done so much to bring to Merseyside the reputation which it should shed at the earliest opportunity.

Mr. John Wilkinson: Can my right hon. Friend inform the House at this stage which points defence system has been selected for the last two type 22s and two leading type 23 frigates as an effective defence against sea-skimming missiles, which proved to be the main requirement for frigates during the Falklands war?

Mr. Heseltine: The vertical launch Sea Wolf system.

Mr. Frank Field: I thank the Secretary of State for his decision. His statement will be a relief to the men and women in the yard. All five hon. Members who represent Wirral constituencies have been equally active in pressing the needs of Cammell Laird. So that unnecessary myths are not manufactured locally, will the right hon. Gentleman again take the opportunity to stress what would have been the result of his decision today if the action in the yard of 37 people had been successful against two mass meetings at the yard which opposed that action?

Mr. Heseltine: I praise the local Members of Parliament on both sides of the House for drawing the attention of the Government to the problems that face Merseyside, and Cammell Laird in particular. I can state categorically that if there had not been an order for Cammell Laird that yard would have closed within this calendar year and 1,700 jobs would have gone.

Mr. Christopher Chope: Is my right hon. Friend able to say which yard put in the lowest tender, which put in the second lowest and which put in the highest? Is he able to confirm that Vosper Thornycroft was beaten on tender price? Is he aware that, if he is not


able to confirm that, there will be a suspicion in Southampton that Vosper Thornycroft has been punished for being able to obtain some overseas orders?

Mr. Heseltine: I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern. I am bound by the conventions of the Ministry, under which we do not provide commercial in-confidence information. No Government have ever done so. We do not provide details of prices at which contracts are let or the list of prices that fail to secure contracts. However, I can give the House an interesting figure, in that we have concluded an arrangement, in terms of the procuring of the two frigates, at a price which is lower than that which we first received on the first tenders.

Mr. Don Dixon: I, too, welcome the fact that a decision has been made on these orders. Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that the type 22 order is placed as early as possible with Swan Hunter, for without that order there will be further redundancies? Will he also ensure that the laying of the keels of these ships is not delayed for as long as the orders were? Has he any news about the auxiliary replenishment tankers, for which Swan Hunter is urgently waiting?

Mr. Heseltine: I have nothing yet to say about any further orders for which we are currently awaiting or considering tenders. However, it is my Ministry's intention to press ahead with the orders for the type 22s as urgently as we can.

Mr. Albert McQuarrie: Will my right hon. Friend say why Hall Russell of Aberdeen and Scott Lithgow of Greenock were denied the opportunity of tendering for these vessels? Can he also say why he decided not to place the second order at Yarrows but instead to give it to some other yard in England?

Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend will understand that we must make judgments about where orders are sought, and I believe that the facilities at the yards to which he referred might not have been adequate for the job that we had in mind. This is not a matter which one should try to divide between England and Scotland. We had a difficult decision to make and we hope that in the new round of tendering for the type 23 there will be a wide and competitive opportunity for firms on both sides of the border.

Mr. Dick Douglas: Will the Secretary of State be more forthcoming about orders for the type 23? I understand that he proposes to keep Yarrow as the lead yard and have the second order go to Swan Hunter. How does that reflect on the loading of Yarrow, which is designed to produce three type 23s simultaneously? Will he reflect on the employment position if further orders for type 23s are not placed there, despite the present tendering position of British Shipbuilders?

Mr. Heseltine: The position at Yarrow is not, as the hon. Gentleman will understand, a responsibility of my Department, so with some hesitancy I trespass on the preserves of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. As I understand it, Yarrow has a substantial workload which includes the construction of the first class type 23. The opportunity to tender for the third type 23 to which I have referred will be available to Yarrow as it will be to other United Kingdom yards. That aspect, together with the fact that Yarrow has tendered for

additional mine countermessure vessels, which will add to the potential workload, puts Yarrow in a relatively better position than some of the other shipbuilding yards.

Mr. John David Taylor: Although the largest shipyard in the United Kingdom was not involved in this tender, can the Secretary of State none the less confirm that Harland and Wolff Ltd. will be retained on the list of shipyards that are invited from time to time to tender for Ministry of Defence contracts?

Mr. Heseltine: Harland and Wolff is certainly considered for Ministry of Defence contracts, and has such contracts, but the firm is not a contender for this type of ship.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: I congratulate the Secretary of State, at a time when the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is busy dismantling regional policy, on showing his firm conviction and belief in that policy and sending two projects to areas of very high unemployment. We welcome the triumph of Stockton over Thatcher.
What exactly did the Secretary of State mean when he said that British Shipbuilders was more responsible for the tender terms than was the Ministry of Defence? I thought that the Ministry of Defence was the purchaser in this matter. It would, therefore, lay down its criteria, in the terms of the tender, that have to be met, and would not do so via British Shipbuilders. When does the right hon. Gentleman expect these ships to come into service?
The Secretary of State said that he would look at the problem as urgently as possible and view fresh orders. Does that statement not reflect the squeezing of the Navy's budget? That budget has been squeezed and squeezed for Trident, and we will be very lucky to have any more orders for these frigates in the next two or three years.

Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to clarify what I meant when I referred to the ability of British Shipbuilders to influence the tendering procedures. Of course, the specifications are laid down by the Ministry of Defence. We are the customers. The actual decisions within British Shipbuilders about the rate of profit and rate of overhead recovery are taken by British Shipbuilders on behalf of the subsidiaries within its control. To that extent, there is a limit to the degree of competitiveness between the yards that would occur if those yards were within the private sector. I hope that that point clarifies the position.
The hon. Gentleman asked about service. I answered that question when I said that it takes between four and five years — nearer four years — for these ships to be constructed. If one takes the order date and adds that period of construction, one comes close to an answer to the question.
On the hon. Gentleman's last point, there will be more orders from the Ministry of Defence. We have substantial available cash resources to spend in part upon the orders for the Royal Navy. The Opposition's forecasts on this matter will prove as ill founded as their forecasts on everything else.

Sir David Price: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Does it arise from the statement?

Sir David Price: Yes, Mr. Speaker. In view of the totally unsatisfactory explanation by my right hon. Friend


the Secretary of State on why Vosper Thornycroft has been so harshly treated, I give notice that I shall seek the earliest opportunity to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Business of the House

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a short business statement.
Following discussions through the usual channels, I have agreed to table a motion to exempt the business on Wednesday on the inspector's report on the airport inquiries 1981–83 for a period of two hours. The motion relating to the Immigration Appeals (Procedure) Rules will now be taken on a subsequent occasion.

Mr. David Winnick: May I ask a question, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member may do so later if he catches my eye.

Mr. Peter Shore: As the Leader of the House has made one announcement to change the business during this week, will he take the occasion to tell the House when he intends to arrange for either a debate or a statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer so that we have an opportunity to hear the latest chapter in the decline and fall of the pound sterling and the further failure of the Government's economic policy?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry to stop the shadow Leader of the House, but this statement relates to the business on Wednesday and the inspector's report on airport inquiries. The right hon. Member will have to find another occasion—not on this statement—to raise that matter, please.

Mr. Shore: We are talking about the business of the House. I am inviting the Leader of the House to consider more widely whether he can make changes in the business to meet the urgency of the nation's problems.

Mr. Biffen: I beleve that the precedents are that I confine myself to the rather narrow point that I have raised. I take note of the important issue that concerns the right hon. Gentleman, and I shall convey his anxieties to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I say to the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) and the rest of the House that we must deal with the statement that we have before the House.

Dr. David Owen: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. With respect, when the business statement is made by the Leader of the House, he is questioned on this week's business. It is not for him to determine upon what he will be questioned, nor, with respect, Mr. Speaker, do I believe that there is a precedent for you — [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] — to confine the questions, provided that they relate to the business of the House.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If the right hon. Member looks up the precedents, he will find that he is not correct about that. If we do not keep in order in this place, we may prejudice subsequent debates. The statement was about a motion to exempt the business on Wednesday for two hours. It was not about business generally, which is announced on Thursdays.

Dr. Owen: The House is not managed for the convenience of the official Opposition or the Government. It is managed for the convenience of all hon. Members. The fact that we are not to have a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer today on the substantial increase in interest rates is open to serious question. It is open to the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) to question you, Mr. Speaker, as I intend to question the Leader of the House, as to why there will not be a debate on Wednesday. The Labour party may not wish to challenge the Government's economic policies, but we do. I believe that we are in order to do so, and I should like your ruling.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I wonder whether the right hon. Member is aware that his hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Wrigglesworth) has already given me notice that he intends to raise the matter under Standing Order No. 10. It would be wrong for the right hon. Member to seek to widen the statement into something different. The precedent is well established.

Dr. Owen: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am surprised that you think it is possible that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Wrigglesworth) would raise the matter under Standing Order No. 10 without having discussed it with me.
I believe that the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) was in order in seeking to question the Leader of the House as to why there is not to be a debate this week on the Chancellor's statement. The Labour party may have given up using the rights and duties of the House, but I should like a ruling, Mr. Speaker, on whether you are saying that the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney was out of order and that I should be out of order in making a similar point, which is that instead of having a debate on Stansted, we should have a debate on the economy.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. One at a time. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) raises an important point, but he and the House know that I am bound by Standing Orders and precedent. I draw his attention and that of the House to page 346 of "Erskine May", where it says, in relation to supplementary business statements,
On other days only business questions relating to the business of the day, or to any change in the business for the week already announced, are permitted.
That is why I ruled as I did.

Mr. Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the right hon. Member for Plymouth,

Devonport (Dr. Owen) should try to raise a quarrel with you when you are clearly acting with the authority of the House.
On future occasions, would you consider the possibility, when the Leader of the House announces a change of business at a time when there is great economic news, such as the change in interests rates, of asking him to arrange for a statement to be made in the House? There is a great deal of anxiety about the effect on jobs and so on, and we would therefore be glad of an opportunity to ask the Leader of the House for a statement to be made as soon as possible on the increase in the interest rate to 14 per cent.

Mr. Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think that I may be able to be of some assistance to you. As you quite rightly said, when there is a business statement on a narrow item, it is important that the leader of the Social Democratic party, if he wishes to get in on another matter—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Skinner: I am coming to the point. It should be open to the right hon. Gentleman to use a little ingenuity. If he had said that perhaps it would have been better for the House to devote an extra two hours to the state of the economy and the fall on the stock exchange instead of to a debate on Stansted, you would have ruled him in order, he would have complied with "Erskine May", and he would have been a little wiser. However, when someone is a one-man band, power sometimes goes to the head.

Dr. Owen: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I always get a little apprehensive when the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) says that he is being helpful to me. However, in this case, that is correct.

Dr. Owen: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In the light of what you read out from "Erskine May", that can hardly be a ruling as to precedent. Will you consider the matter in relation to what has happened in the past?

Mr. Speaker: I shall certainly do that.

Mr. John Wilkinson: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Is this another point of order?

Mr. Wilkinson: No, Mr. Speaker, it is a question on the statement of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. Is the matter to be debated on Wednesday for the extra time to be considered a party matter, or, as far as the Government are concerned, is it not?

Mr. Biffen: Whipping is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary.

Coal Industry Dispute

Mr. Stanley Orme: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the Government's involvement in the mining industry dispute.
The Government's actions during the past week have left the country in no doubt that they are trying to impede the resumption of negotiations. It is in terms of that specific matter that the House should be able to debate the mining dispute once again.
There cannot be a single Member in any part of the House who does not regard the matter as important. Each week that the Government prolong the dispute they are spending an estimated £80 million in their attempt to break the strike and the National Union of Mineworkers. Today there has been another increase in interest rates, which is not unconnected with the dispute. Meanwhile, miners and their families are suffering increasing hardship in their struggle to maintain their jobs and ensure a future for their communities. The matter is increasingly urgent as a result of the Government's intervention this week. Recently both the chairman of the National Coal Board and Mr. Michael Eaton stated that they believed that the only way to resolve this dispute was through a negotiated settlement. Even more recently, the leadership of the NUM has called for a resumption of negotiations without preconditions.
Despite the statements of both sides in the dispute, the Government have blatantly interfered to prevent negotiations. Last week the press briefing from the Prime Minister's Office was fully reported in the national press, and had the effect of scotching any immediate resumption of negotiations. On Saturday, Mr. David Hart, a close adviser of the Prime Minister's wrote in The Times:
Any true negotiation now would represent defeat for the coal board … the time for negotiated settlement is past … they must be defeated".
The House must hear from the Secretary of State on this matter. The Secretary of State should make it plain to the House what the attitude of the Government is and not leave hon. Members and the country to guess from conflicting press reports. The House should have the opportunity to discuss this long and serious dispute and the implications of the Government's actions.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme) asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,

the Government's involvement in the mining industry dispute.
I have listened with great care to what has been said by the right hon. Member. As he knows, we had a long discussion on this matter at Question Time today. I have to take account of the fact that it is hoped that negotiations are to begin tomorrow.
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, my sole responsibility in exercising my discretion in considering applications under Standing Order No. 10 is to decide whether they should have priority over the business already set down for this evening or tomorrow. I regret that I cannot find that the matter that he has raised meets those criteria, and I cannot therefore submit his application to the House.

Mr. Orme: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand the views that you have expressed, and I am not challenging them. However, I speak as someone who has made exhaustive efforts to promote negotiations throughout the dispute. As such, I say that it is not negotiations that are to start tomorrow, but talks about talks. The situation is one of great significance both to the Labour Opposition and to myself. If the talks were to fail, or if the negotiations did not start, I must advise you on behalf of the Opposition, that I will immediately raise the matter in the House again.

Mr. Speaker: I fully understand, and fully accept, the right hon. Gentleman's point.

Mr. A. J. Beith: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In referring to the same matter on 24 January, you pointed out:
I am bound to have regard to other opportunities in the House to raise these matters." — [Official Report, 24 January 1985; Vol. 71, c. 1145]
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will bear in mind the great difference between discussing a matter for three hours, as under Standing Order No. 10, and having a full day in which to discuss it, which gives wider opportunities, especially to Back Benchers, to take part. If the matter were the subject for an Opposition day, it would be open to us to discuss it for a full day.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The choice of subject for Opposition days is not a matter for me.

Mr. Dick Douglas: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is with some trepidation and apprehension that I raise this matter with you. I am aware of the difficulties that you must have in trying to arrive at a conclusion, but many of us who are actively involved in the dispute are aware that we have not had an opportunity to discuss it on the Floor of the House, no matter how responsibility for that is apportioned. My fear and, I believe, that of many other Opposition Members is that if there are pressures on the negotiations, the Government have opportunities, through their offices and links with the NCB, to influence, for good or ill, the course of the deliberations. The House, however, has no opportunity to ventilate the feelings of the whole nation about the dispute. I trust that you will keep that in mind in any further representations that are made to you.

Mr. Speaker: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I keep that matter very much in mind. I think that the House should have an opportunity, at the appropriate moment, to discuss this issue.

Mr. Dave Nellist: rose—

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: It is nice of the hon. Gentleman to look in—he has missed his question.

Mr. Nellist: I spend more time here than you do, sunshine.

Mr. Speaker: Order. My name is not sunshine.

Mr. Nellist: It seems to be one of those days.
Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In your ruling a few minutes ago, Mr. Speaker, you explained that the only criterion by which you are allowed to judge an application under Standing Order No. 10 is whether it should take precedence over the business set down for today or tomorrow. Would you expand on that explanation slightly, because the business that is set down for today


—the Education (Corporal Punishment) Bill — has already been delayed from last week. On the day on which the Bill was supposed to be debated last week, you turned down an application under Standing Order No. 10 for a debate on the miners' strike. If the Bill was not sufficiently important to be discussed last week, could it not be postponed again so that a crucially important debate on the miners' strike could take place today?

Mr. Speaker: I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to Standing Order No. 10, which sets out my discretion fully.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a different point of order, of which I gave you notice—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall take that point of order later. It is a different issue. Let us deal with all this first.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Is this another attempt to be helpful?

Mr. Skinner: I try to do that all the time, Mr. Speaker. In regard to the criteria by which you make a decision, you referred to the fact that there might be negotiations and gave the impression that if the House debated the matter, that could necessarily hamper the negotiations. There is a bit of a problem there in that, although the House might keep its collective mouth shut, the Government continue to open theirs. The Government feed the media in all sorts of ways and the idea of having a debate is to provide some balance. That is important and I hope that, when an application under Standing Order No. 10 is made again, you will bear that in mind.

Mr. Speaker: I most certainly will.

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Although I do not wish to challenge your ruling on the application under Standing Order No. 10, are you aware that the mining dispute has now gone on for more than half of the life of this Parliament, that, so far, only one application under Standing Order No. 10 relating to it has been granted, that more than 23 have been made, that many people outside the House find it unbelievable that the mining dispute should be discussed everywhere else and affect everyone's life in some way and cause great hardship to some, although less to others, yet the House still does not give time to debate the matter? I trust that you will look favourably on a further application under Standing Order No. 10.

Mr. Speaker: I repeat what I said last Thursday. I am not responsible for the organisation of business in the House. That is done through the usual channels and with all the parties concerned. The Opposition have at their disposal an Opposition day, broadly once a week. It so happens that this week there is not an Opposition day, and I shall certainly have to take that into account if applications are made in future.

Secretary of State for Transport

Mr. Peter Snape: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the failure of the Secretary of State for Transport to respond to a court decision of 11 January 1985 that he had acted irrationally, improperly and unlawfully in compelling the Greater London council to pay a sum of approximately £50 million in excess of the sum properly required to finance London Regional Transport.
The matter is specific because it relates to a court judgment, as I have outlined, and to the judge's comments about the conduct of the Secretary of State and his subsequent inaction.
It is important, because Ministers are surely not above the law, and there are rumours that the Government are considering a change of the law and, in so doing, introducing retrospective legislation to make lawful what the judge called unlawful. The Government constantly demand respect for the rule of law of others and regularly campaign, without much evidence, as the law and order party.
The matter is urgent because as long ago as 14 January the Secretary of State claimed, while refusing to answer questions on this matter, that my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks):
will know that we have appealed against the judgment, and therefore it is sub judice." — [Official Report, 14 January 1985; Vol. 71, c. 2.]
I am informed that, despite the Secretary of State's comments in the House on that day at column 2, as I have quoted, and at column 11 and column 13, to the effect that the Government intended to appeal and that he would therefore not answer questions on this matter, no such appeal has so far been received by the court. In view of the rumours that the Government are to seek a change in the law in attempt to justify the Secretary of State's disgraceful conduct, might I press you to approve this application?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,
the failure of the Secretary of State for Transport to respond to a court decision of 11 January 1985 that he had acted irrationally, improperly and unlawfully in compelling the Greater London council to pay a sum of approximately £50 million in excess of the sum properly required to finance London Regional Transport.
I have listened with great care to what the hon. Member has said, but I regret that I do not consider the matter that he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10, and I cannot therefore submit his application to the House.

Interest rates

Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the rise in interest rates which has taken place today.
This is a specific matter because it concerns a 2 per cent. increase in the base rate, which will have a profound impact on the economy and the Government's policy.
The matter is important because the rise will substantially increase costs to industry—they have risen by over £1 billion since the beginning of the year—and almost inevitably lead to substantial increases in mortgage interest rates for householders and others who borrow money. The rise will undermine the foundations of the Government's economic policy.
The House should give urgent consideration to the matter, not least because there will not be another opportunity to consider it in the near future. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that when a smaller increase in interest rates took place only a short while ago you allowed a private notice question and the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a statement to the House. We have had no statement today and no opportunity to discuss the issue.
I hope, Mr. Speaker that you will accept my application to provide the House with the opportunity to have a short debate on the Government's economic strategy for the future, what reserves are being used to bolster the pound, what the Government's exchange rate policy is and what will happen to interest rates in the future. I hope that you will provide the House with an early opportunity to discuss the matter.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,
the rise in interest rates which has taken place today.
I have not today received any application for a private notice question, possibly because the news came after midday. I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I regret that I do not consider that the matter he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10, and I cannot therefore submit his application to the House.

Sub Judice Rule

Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wish to raise a matter about which I gave notice to your office shortly after 10 o'clock this morning. I hope that you will rule on it, possibly tomorrow, when you have had time to reflect on the matter. It is the delicate and difficult matter of the sub judice rule.
In answer to a question, the Secretary of State for Defence said that a report in The Times was without truth. I am not concerned with the report, but simply with a quotation from a Member of Parliament, for such is Admiral Hill-Norton. In the paper of record he is reported as saying:
One cannot help feeling that, like the Clive Ponting case, they are doing it to suppress something which may be damaging to the reputation of Government Ministers and officials. The whole thing stinks.
The House will realise that I could not personally take exception to that comment. Therefore, I feel easier about raising the matter as a general issue of principle. Someone somewhere will have to sort out what is sub judice and what is not. The rules are extremely elastic.
Last week, many points were raised with you. I spent the morning at the Old Bailey and can only report that hardened court reporters had never before seen anything quite like that comment from a Member of Parliament. Will you, Mr. Speaker, reflect on the issues raised, and possibly rule tomorrow?

Mr. Speaker: I shall certainly do that.

Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.

Mr. Speaker: With the leave of the House, I shall put together the Questions on the 11 motions relating to statutory instruments.
Ordered,
That the draft Redundancy Payments (Variation of Rebates) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft Specialised Agencies of the United Nations (Immunities and Privileges) (Amendment) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (Legal Capacities) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft Water Undertakings (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft British Waterways Board (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft Glasgow Underground (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft British Alcan Aluminium Limited and Lochaber Power Company (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft Scottish Electricity Boards (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft British Gas Corporation (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft British Railways Board (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the draft British Telecommunications plc (Rateable Values) (Scotland) Order 1985 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.—[Mr. Neubert.].

STANDING COMMITTEES ON EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

Ordered,
That European Community Documents Nos. 9182/84, 11388/84 and 4096/85 (replacing 9469/84) concerning wine be referred to a Standing Committee on European Community Documents.—[Mr. Neubert.].

Orders of the Day — Education (Corporal Punishment) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Sir Keith Joseph): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The objective of the Bill is to secure compliance with the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in February 1982. Under article 2 of the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, states are obliged to respect the philosophical convictions of their citizens. The court's judgment means that a parental conviction against corporal punishment in schools comes within the terms of that article.
The United Kingdom Government ratified the convention in March 1951 and undertook to abide by the decision of the court in any case to which they were a party. There is no provision for appeal, and the court's judgment in February 1982 is therefore binding.
The question for the Government, therefore, was to decide on the means of compliance. One way of complying would be to legislate to abolish corporal punishment in state schools. That is not required by the judgment, which was concerned with respect for a philosophical conviction, and the Government reject that option. The Government are opposed in principle to forcing abolition.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has encouraged gradual elimination of corporal punishment on a voluntary basis. For many years that has been the policy in Scotland, where the circumstances are different from those in the rest of the United Kingdom, and where the process of voluntary elimination has largely been completed. The Government are at one in rejecting enforced abolition.
Outside Scotland, there is no prospect of a consensus on abolition. Many parents and teachers see a place for corporal punishment in schools; for example, last year a sample poll in England and Wales showed more than half of the teachers interviewed to be in favour of retention, compared with more than a third in favour of abolition. Therefore, a state ban on corporal punishment is not called for by the European Court's judgment. The Government are not prepared to ride roughshod over the views of the millions of parents and teachers in this country who see a place for corporal punishment.
It is all very well for the Opposition to adopt a centralist posture and say that they will ignore the views of millions of teachers and parents who believe that they should have a voice in the decision whether corporal punishment in any school should be ruled out of order. Once again the Opposition have espoused a policy of imposing their views on the country. We are going as far as we can to consult parents and teachers by the means described in the Bill.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Since the Secretary of State is so keen to give powers to parents,



will he explain how the Bill deals with the position in which one parent believes in corporal punishment and the other does not?

Sir Keith Joseph: In compliance with the judgment of the court, we must give priority to the view of the parent who has a philosophical conviction, or who expresses a wish consistent with a philosophical conviction against corporal punishment.
The second option for the Government was to adopt what might be called a dual system. The Government therefore considered the possibility of a dual system of schools, some where corporal punishment was used, and others where it was not. In theory, such a dual system would allow parents to choose between the two types of school.
However, there would be enormous practical difficulties and it could be hugely expensive. The practical difficulties would be greatest in rural areas, where choice is limited by the sparsity of population. In all areas, however, there would be administrative complications for the allocation of pupils to schools. It would be expensive because of the need to provide additional schools to maintain existing patterns of choice between different types of school. Altogether it would be a wasteful use of resources. Since no parent must be penalised for seeking respect for his or her philosophical conviction, the existing provision of schools would virtually have to be doubled. Therefore, the Government rejected a dual system option.
The remaining option is that embodied in the Bill.

Mr. Michael Latham: My right hon. Friend spoke of the remaining option. Will he explain why he did not consider a fourth option, which is to do absolutely nothing?

Sir Keith Joseph: That is an attractive option, but for the one overriding factor that the country does not break its treaty obligations. The country subscribed to the rule of court in 1951. In 1966, under a Labour Government, the country widened its undertaking to comply from those cases where the applicant was another state to those where the applicant was an individual. Since 1966, the Government have confirmed their compliance with the treaty every five years, and the latest date of such confirmation was 1981. I am sure that many hon. Members find aspects of the Bill distasteful, but most hon. Members will agree that it would be even more distasteful for the country to fail to comply with the judgment of the court and with the treaty to which the country has subscribed.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: Although I welcome the Government's commitment to trying to enforce the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, does the Secretary of State agree that there is a wider obligation upon the Government to respect the convention which, under article 3, provides that inhuman and degrading treatment shall not be administered? Does he accept that article 3 was considered in the court's judgment which the Bill seeks to enforce and that, although the circumstances were held not to require the invocation of article 3, it remains the case that if corporal punishment is inflicted in schools, on the facts of some cases, the British Government may once again be hauled

before an international court? Is it not extremely undesirable that Britain should once again face the possibility of a judgment against the Government because the Secretary of State has not sought to abolish corporal punishment?

Sir Keith Joseph: I understand that some cases under article 3 will come before the court. The Government will defend their position. It is not obvious to the Government that corporal punishment, especially when one considers the breadth of definition of that phrase, represents degrading or inhuman treatment. The hon. Gentleman should not make judgments before the court does.

Mr. Alan Howarth: My right hon. Friend said that some aspects of the Bill might be distasteful. Does he find distasteful the fact that, in consequence of the measure, the principle of in loco parentis, and with it the authority of teachers, head teachers and governors of schools may be seriously undermined?

Sir Keith Joseph: If that were true, I would respect my hon. Friend's concern, but I am advised that the in loco parentis position of the teacher is not undermined. It is slightly reduced in connection with this Bill only, but in all other aspects of responsibility in school it remains undiminished.
The Government have adopted the only other course available—an exemptions scheme. It may not be ideal, but it is better than abolition or a dual system. In short, it is the least objectionable solution. An exemptions scheme allows parents whose children would otherwise be liable to corporal punishment in school to exempt them from such punishment. Where schools have abandoned all forms of corporal punishment, or to the extent that a school has abandoned it — I am thinking of a school with an infant class as well as junior classes—the Bill will not affect them, and there will be no obligation to consult parents. Where schools use corporal punishment, in any of its forms — I must emphasise that a slap would constitute corporal punishment—the Bill gives parents a choice. They can leave the matter to the school, in which case the child will be liable to corporal punishment, or they can opt the child out of corporal punishment.

Mr. Eric Forth: Will my right hon. Friend make it crystal clear to me and to the House whether this is an opting-in or opting-out system? My facility to read legislative documents is not as strong as it could be, but the first part of clause 2 refers to
maintaining registers showing those pupils who are not to be exempt from corporal punishment",
which suggests to me that the onus is on parents to opt in if they wish their children to be subject to corporal punishment.

Sir Keith Joseph: The Bill is an opting-out measure. The children whose parents do not opt them out will remain on the register; it is the children on the register who will remain liable to corporal punishment. I was about to explain that with my next sentence.
Under the system to be introduced by regulations, parents who do not reply to an approach from the school will be deemed to have consented to the use of corporal punishment on their children. In effect, it is an opting-out scheme. Unless parents take the trouble to return a form to the school saying that they opt their child out, a teacher


in any court action will have the defence of acting in loco parentis. The initiative of asking the question, "Do you or do you not agree to corporal punishment for your child?" lies with the school. The responsibility for saying no lies with the parents.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is that not made clear in clause 2(4)?

Sir Keith Joseph: I had hoped that it was abundantly clear from the entire Bill, but I am glad to have that confirmation from my hon. Friend.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Does the Secretary of State accept that it is clear from the Bill that schools will have some administrative problems if they must take the responsibility of ensuring that a reply from a parent is kept safely? Does he accept that many schools would prefer a system in which the opposite was true, so that they had proof of the willingness of parents that their children should be liable to corporal punishment?

Sir Keith Joseph: I imagine that there are two points of view about this, and no doubt it can be argued in Committee. However, especially after the helpful results of the consultation that we have carried out in recent months, we believe this option to be the most practical.
If the school does not receive an answer from a parent, I imagine that it will be required by regulations to remind the parent that an answer is awaited. If, after a few weeks —or the period that is laid down in the regulations—no answer has been received, that parent will be assumed to have forgone the opportunity to opt out his child or children, and his or their names will be entered on the register.
As the court requires us to respect the philosophical conviction of a parent or parents, it is surely not too much to hope that a parent with such philosophical convictions will answer a question from the school and return a form.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: The Bill has given encouragement to many parents with children in schools where corporal punishment has not been available until now. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the Bill will allow parents to opt in to corporal punishment in schools where there is at present no corporal punishment? If not, why not?

Sir Keith Joseph: I cannot answer my hon. Friend as he would wish. Where a school has already stopped using corporal punishment in any of its forms, it will not be required by the Bill to approach parents for their permission. Of course, it is open to a school to reconsider, but it will not automatically be open to parents to act under the Bill to persuade a school to change its view. If parents, singly or in a group, wish to ask a school to reconsider its position, they will be as free in the future as they are now, and have been, to try so to persuade the school.

Mr. John Heddle (Mid-Staffordshire): Could my right hon. Friend help those Conservative Members who are genuinely concerned about how to cast their votes later tonight on what appears, at the very least, to be a muddled Bill? Has my right hon. Friend received the suggestion from teachers' organisations that if there are to be two tiers of punishment—for those children whose parents are prepared to allow corporal punishment to be administered to them there will be three of the best, whereas for the

others there will be 100 lines or three hours of detention — this will create the most enormous administrative problems?

Sir Keith Joseph: Yes, such views have reached my ears. It has been widely said, both in the House and among the teachers, that such difficulties might arise. In a few moments I propose to deal with them.

Mr. Tony Marlow: Is it not becoming apparent that if a child wants to carry out a misdemeanour he should do it with a child who is on the register because then he will not be beaten, whereas if he misbehaves with a child who is on the register he will be beaten? Is it not obvious that the legislation is absurd? Is this not the penalty that we are paying for allowing foreign institutions to decide what laws we in this country should have?

Sir Keith Joseph: My hon. Friend will find much support for that point of view. However, the fact is that the Government of this country subscribe to the treaty. Therefore, we have an obligation. The method that we have adopted in the Bill has more regard for the wishes of parents than would a Government ban on corporal punishment. If a school wishes to use corporal punishment on any pupil, it has to go to that pupil's parents to seek their views. The school is obliged to accede to the parent's wishes if the parent says no. In the most direct way possible, therefore, an exemption scheme meets the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. Without children moving from one school, normally the one the parent has chosen, to another, parents are able to secure respect for their philosophical convictions against corporal punishment.

Mr. Martin Flannery: Does this apply to public schools, or are public schools exempt from human rights? Is the parent of a child who is at a public school—this is, in fact, a private school, but it is a curious British habit to call private schools public schools—able to prevent his offspring receiving corporal punishment? May I therefore pose to the Minister the problem of the assisted places scheme?

Sir Keith Joseph: I wonder whether the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) will permit me to deal with that precise point in a few moments.

Mr. Flannery: I do not want to create difficulties for the Minister, but can he explain what will happen to such a child?

Sir Keith Joseph: The hon. Member will have his chance, if he will allow me to reach that part of my speech.
The exemptions approach has been criticised — I come now to the anxiety expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle)—

Mr. Fred Silvester: My right hon. Friend said that the Bill provides for the rights laid down by the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. Will he make it perfectly clear to me and to the House whether, if left to his own good judgment, he would have introduced a Bill of this kind? Does he find that, as presented to the House, the Bill is in the best interests of the education of the children of this country?

Sir Keith Joseph: I shall go only so far as to say that if my right hon. Friends in the Government had offered me the chance to present a Bill on education, this is not the subject upon which we should be legislating.
An exemptions approach has been criticised as unfair. It would allow corporal punishment to be used on one child and not on another, even if both had committed the same offence. This is a very plausible argument, and I can see that it contains a good deal of force, but even within the same school individual circumstances already sometimes cause one child, perhaps because of problems at home, or because of an emotional crisis, or for some other reason, not to be subject to corporal punishment.
In the case of two schools virtually adjacent to one another and serving the same catchment area, one may have abolished corporal punishment, while the other has not. Moreover, in the same school, in particular where there is a mixed age range, although infants are not subject to corporal punishment they are occasionally slapped on the leg or the hand. In many schools, girls are exempt from many forms of corporal punishment, while boys are not. To argue that an exemptions scheme makes for unfairness between children who have misbehaved in the same way is to assume that corporal punishment is the only sort of punishment.
I hope that all hon. Members will accept that corporal punishment is used only for the most severe offences. Nor is it the only punishment. There are all sorts of punishments, including the withdrawal of rewards and privileges. This is probably one of the most widely used forms of punishment. Therefore, I do not accept that unfairness is necessarily a compelling argument.
If two children in a school have committed the same offence and one is subject to corporal punishment and the other is not, and corporal punishment is applied to the child who is not exempt, I do not accept that the child who is exempt will not be jealous of the child who is subject to corporal punishment. In certain circumstances, it could be that a child would rather have a short, sharp punishment rather than the longer drawn out punishment that might replace it. Nevertheless, I freely grant to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester) that there may well be a risk of unfairness between children, one of whom is exempt and one of whom is not.
Exempted pupils would not go unpunished. There is a range of other sanctions that teachers could use. Where pupils are caught in the same act of misbehaviour and some are exempted and some are not, teachers can decide to offer to those who are liable to corporal punishment the choice of an alternative. This choice of punishment is sometimes given now. What matters is that pupils should know that they will not go unpunished. The withdrawal of rewards and privileges can be, and perhaps is, the best alternative. Pupils are made to realise that they cannot misbehave with impunity. An exemptions scheme can therefore be made to work.

Mr. Edward Leigh: If the philosophical argument in favour of the Bill, as opposed to the pragmatic argument, is that parents have the right of ultimate control to remove their children from activities which they dislike, whether it be religious education under the Education Act 1944 or caning under this Bill, why should we stop at that? Why should parents

not have the right to withdraw their children from biased political education, such as peace studies? Are we not in danger of imposing double standards?

Sir Keith Joseph: It is open to any parent or child to complain if education is being distorted into indoctrination.
An exemptions scheme can be made to work. Practical questions arise, however, about obtaining and recording the views of parents. That is why a consultative document was issued in 1983. The Bill has benefited from that exercise, in particular because the response has shown the advantage of seeking the views of all parents whose children are liable to corporal punishment. Under the scheme outlined in the Bill, the initiative lies with the school rather than with the parents. This, together with the fact that the school will keep a list of those who are liable to corporal punishment, from which exempted children will have been excluded by their parents, reduces to a minimum the risk of errors and misunderstandings.
I come now to the main features of the Bill. The first three clauses relate to England and Wales. Clause 1 concerns the defence available to a teacher or other member of staff in civil or criminal proceedings for battery. Where a teacher has administered moderate and reasonable corporal punishment, he can at present advance the defence that he was acting in loco parentis.
The Bill provides that that defence cannot be advanced in civil proceedings in the case of pupils who have been exempted from corporal punishment. The definition of corporal punishment is necessarily wide. It extends beyond the use of the cane or tawse, to other forms of bodily chastisement. Most acts which constitute battery would be disallowed in the case of an exempted pupil.
However, there must be safeguards for staff who are obliged to intervene physically for the purpose of restraining pupils. Provided that averting immediate danger to a person or property is one of the reasons for the action, the in loco parentis defence will still be available. There is no question of destroying the in loco parentis concept. For most practical purposes, apart from that issue of corporal punishment, it stays.
Pupils would be exempt from corporal punishment unless their names appeared on a register. The requirement to keep a register will apply to all maintained schools and to non-maintained special schools in which corporal punishment is used. I repeat that where a school has given up the use of corporal punishment in all its forms, the Bill does not affect it.
The requirement to comply with the Bill will also extend to pupils whose fees are paid wholly or in part directly out of public funds. That will affect local authority placements and pupils benefiting under the assisted places scheme or the music and ballet schemes. The legislation will not apply to other pupils in independent schools.
Finally, I should stress that the clause applies to corporal punishment used by or on the authority of a member of staff, and therefore extends to others besides teachers.

Mr. Marlow: I am sorry to intervene a second time, but would a public school, or a private school as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) called it, be able to say that, as a condition of allowing a child to come under the assisted places scheme, it would require the parents to put their child on the register? If not, does my right hon. Friend expect to lose several assisted places?

Sir Keith Joseph: I should like to consider that question. My impression is that that would not be consistent with the assisted places scheme. Either my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will answer that question whether he replies to the debate if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or I shall ensure that a letter goes to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Robert Key: My right hon. Friend said that schools in receipt of public money would be liable to the scheme. Does that include children of military and diplomatic officers?

Sir Keith Joseph: I must give my hon. Friend the same answer. I should like to make sure of the answer to that and then write to him. The Bill applies to those children placed by local authorities in independent schools.
Clause 2 provides for the registers maintained by schools using corporal punishment to record the names of those pupils who are liable to the sanction on the basis of consent by their parents. The clause is the framework around which regulations will be prepared. We envisage regulations which will allow a school to assume consent if the parent did not reply to the school within a specified period of, say, six weeks. We also envisage that parents could change their minds. "Parent" would be interpreted broadly. A school's initial responsibility to seek the views of parents would be discharged by sending a form to the pupil's home address.
A school or local education authority may change its policy on corporal punishment, introducing it in schools where it was not previously used, or abandoning it in others. In that case, schools would have to set up registers or abandon them as the case may be.

Mr. Clement Freud: Would there be some sort of gestation period, or would it be possible for a parent to phone up when he finds that his or her child will be caned and countermand that instruction?

Sir Keith Joseph: No, the thought is that regulations will provide for a few days between the decision and the effectiveness of that decision so that the teacher concerned can have no doubt about the position. Time is provided for a name to be put on or taken off the register without any misunderstanding.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: Does my right hon. Friend, with his long parliamentary experience, remember any piece of legislation more bizarre than this? Has he ever spoken to anything with less conviction? Would he not be rather relieved if Parliament discharged him of his responsibilities this evening?

Sir Keith Joseph: I think that the answers to my hon. Friend's questions are yes, no, no, but I should like to Make sure.
The main purpose of clause 3 is to define responsibility for the maintenance of registers. In a maintained school, the responsible body would be the governors; in a non-maintained special school and for pupils affected in an independent school, the proprietor; for nursery schools maintained by an LEA, and for pupils educated otherwise than at school, the LEA would be the responsible body.
Clause 4 applies to Scotland. While its provisions are basically similar to those contained in clauses 1, 2 and 3, it also takes into account certain aspects particular to the Scottish position. Such aspects include, in the case of

young persons—those aged 16 or 17 years—that it will be the young person himself whose views are sought, not those of his parents. That mirrors the position accorded young persons in other aspects of Scottish education legislation; for example, rights relating to choice of school.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: rose—

Sir Keith Joseph: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not cross-examine me on Scotland.

Mr. Bennett: I want to ask about a much more general philosophical point. Why should pupils over 16 be consulted in Scotland, but not in England and Wales? The European Court was concerned with the philosophical views of parents. If we take into account the philosophical views of 16-year-olds in Scotland, surely we should do the same in England and Wales?

Sir Keith Joseph: That is not what the court requires us to comply with.
Clause 4 reflects the long-standing policy of Scotland to which I have already referred. Those authorities which have already eliminated corporal punishment from their schools need not give fresh consideration to the issue, but can rest on their past decisions.
Clause 5 anticipates arrangements for the extension of provisions corresponding to those in clauses 1, 2 and 3 to Northern Ireland. Clauses 6 and 7 are of a general nature and, inter alia, provide for different clauses to be brought into force at different times. The schedule describes aspects of the Bill which are to be covered by regulations.
The administrative cost of an exemptions scheme would be slight, confined largely to postal and other costs incidental to keeping registers. As to extra expenditure arising from alternatives to corporal punishment, I reject the notion that there must be expensive alternatives. Some period of adjustment for schools which decide not to use corporal punishment will be necessary, but in the past others have made that adjustment, either from their own choice or as a result of local education authority policy. There is no need to expand teaching forces.

Sir Kenneth Lewis: I notice that there is nothing in the Bill about savings in the cost of buying canes.

Sir Keith Joseph: I must bear that argument in mind if anyone claims that more expense would be involved.
I repeat that action was necessary to secure compliance with a ruling which has the status of a treaty obligation. I accept that any method of compliance is bound to be untidy. I do not accept that the Bill is a muddle. The Bill is consistent with upholding good discipline in schools, for which many parents and teachers regard the availability of corporal punishment as an important requirement, because, as the House will understand, there are alternatives to corporal punishment.
The Government have sought to produce a measure which keeps the additional administrative burden to a minimum. In England and Wales the reaction of many schools may be to choose abolition. If so, it will be their choice. The essential concern of the Government is to maintain the rights of the school and to consult the parents to comply with the court ruling in the important matter of discipline. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

5 pm

Mr. Giles Radice: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill because it does not abolish corporal punishment, leads to unfairness between pupils, creates a bureaucratic nightmare, and fails to establish the atmosphere of co-operation in which good discipline can be maintained and educational standards raised.
This is a totally unworkable Bill. As everyone knows, it is an uneasy compromise between the view held by many Conservative hon. Members that corporal punishment is good, and the binding decision of the European Court of Human Rights which, in the Campbell and Cosans case, upheld, under article 2, the rights of parents who oppose corporal punishment.
Conservative Members of Parliament, among them the Secretary of State, believe that it is right, even in the 1980s when corporal punishment is banned in all other European countries, that schools should be able to use the sanction of what outside the classroom is defined as battery—in other words, a criminal offence. The Secretary of State has tried desperately but unavailingly to square the circle between his party's prejudices and the decision of the European Court of Human Rights.
Right hon. and hon. Members will recollect that the Secretary of State produced a four-page consultative document 17 months after the court's decision. That proposed a system of opt-out, which was exactly the same as that contained in the Bill, for the children of parents who opposed corporal punishment. However, in the consultative exercise which followed, the opt-out compromise was roundly condemned by all authoritative organisations, and I think that the Secretary of State should have told the House that when he was extolling the virtues of his Bill.
I remind the right hon. Gentleman of what the organisations said to him. The Association of Metropolitan Authorities called the proposals "unworkable". The Association of County Councils said:
a system which allowed different sanctions for the same misdemeanour … would be difficult to justify.
The Campaign for State Education said that the European Court had made the use of corporal punishment
inequitable, illogical and above all impracticable.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: These criticisms of the Bill may be justified, but why should not school governors make the ultimate decision, as the Bill provides?

Mr. Radice: I shall come to that. I want to make my speech in my own way.
The National Union of Teachers said that the Government's policy was "ill-conceived".
The Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association had the gravest reservations about the wisdom of creating two disciplinary systems.
Perhaps the most significant comment came from the National Association of Head Teachers. Right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that the consultative document stressed the central role played by heads in maintaining discipline. The head teachers warned the Government of the conflict between the decision not to abolish and the decision to retain a sanction which would be implemented on an unsatisfactory basis. Only last week the same association went so far as to urge the Government

to fix a date for phasing out beating instead of introducing a measure that would bring about abolition by the back door.
On 26 October the Secretary of State told the House:
Over 100 organisations and individuals responded, and it is clear that there is concern about an exemptions system." — [Official Report, 26 October 1984; Vol. 65 c. 735.]
If the Secretary of State is honest—and I know that he tries to be — I think that he will admit that the organisations which support him can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The right hon. Gentleman has himself publicly accepted, as he told the House on 8 November, that an opt-out system would have "untidy consequences." Today he went even further in airing his misgivings about the Bill. Yet, despite the almost universal condemnation, despite all the warnings about unworkability and despite his own awareness of the inadequacy of the Bill, the Secretary of State has chosen to proceed with this absurd piece of legislation.
Any objective observer must conclude that the Bill's main effect is to create two patterns of discipline in the classroom—one for those pupils whose parents do not consent to corporal punishment, and the other for those pupils whose parents either support corporal punishment or have failed to reply to the school governors in writing that they are against corporal punishment.

Mr. Forth: The hon. Gentleman may wish to make some play with the term "philosophical convictions," because that is the basis of the court's judgment. However, if a parent has philosophical convictions, it is unlikely that he will fail to respond to an approach to him by the school about a subject which is as important as this one. Is not that so?

Mr. Radice: It may be that the hon. Gentleman is a better correspondent than I am, but I do not always reply to every letter sent to me. I do my best, but occasionally matters go wrong. The problem is that if a parent does not reply, the assumption is that he or she is in favour of corporal punishment. That is the difficulty. [Interruption.] In any event, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) points out, he may not receive the letter.

Mr. J. F. Pawsey: Did not my right hon. Friend say that not only would parents receive a letter asking whether they were prepared to have their children punished corporally but, if they did not reply, that they would also receive a reminder? They would have to neglect two specific letters. On such an important matter as this, that would be extremely unlikely.

Mr. Radice: I hope that most parents would reply, but some might not. But that is not my main argument against the Bill.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: It is not a very good one, either.

Mr. Radice: It is not a bad one. But I am coming to the "alpha" part.

Mr. Hogg: Could do better.

Mr. Cormack: Not very good for a Wykehamist.

Mr. Radice: Let me paint a scenario for right hon. and hon. Members. Let us say that there are two pupils who misbehave. For the sake of argument, I shall call them Keith and Giles. Keith's parents do not mind him being


beaten, but Giles's parents happen to mind. They have a conviction against it. [Laughter.] Right hon. and hon. Members may laugh, but this is what will happen, and it will be chaotic. The teacher may remember the wishes of the parents of the two unruly pupils, or he may have to consult the register of those parents who are in favour of corporal punishment. It has even been suggested that Keith and Giles will be wearing different coloured badges—blue for Keith and red for Giles. Whatever is the case, the two pupils are bound to resent the different punishments for the same misdemeanour—let us say, smoking in class—while the teacher will be put in the impossible position of applying different sanctions for the same offence. That is the reality of what the Secretary of State is offering the House, and right hon. and hon. Members should realise it.

Mr. Richard Tracey: Should I assume from what the hon. Gentleman has said that if a Labour Government were in power, he would say to the parents of Keith, "Caning will be abolished; you will have no say"? The hon. Gentleman must admit that at least the Bill gives parents a choice. How will he explain his attitude to parents who believe that caning is an appropriate punishment?

Mr. Radice: If parents believe in caning, they can administer it at home. The House knows that the Labour party is in favour of abolishing corporal punishment.
Once the European Court of Human Rights had made its decision, in practical terms there was no real alternative to abolition. Otherwise two classes of discipline would be created. That is the point that I have been trying to make. It is the overwhelming argument against the Bill, and the reason why hon. Members should vote against it.
The difficulties for schools do not end there. In primary and secondary schools, governors will have to write to parents and then compile a register of those who do not object in writing to corporal punishment. The procedure will be slightly different for nursery schools. I did not realise that teachers still hit three and four-year-old children. However, I am reminded by the Bill that that is a possibility. For nursery schools, local education authorities will have the responsibility of drawing up the register or, perhaps, getting rid of it — I am not sure what the Secretary of State has in mind. He appears to be offering Conservative Members in favour of corporal punishment the carrot that it might be possible to introduce more corporal punishment than currently exists. I think that that is basically dishonest because I do not believe that that will happen.
The Bill will create additional problems for schools and local education authorities. It is a farcical nonsense, and the Secretary of State, the Minister and Conservative Back Benchers are well aware of that. We are considering an absolute nonsense. It is arguable that the Bill does not even carry out the minimum requirements of the decision by the European Court of Human Rights in the Campbell and Cosans case—which is to ensure that parents who are opposed to corporal punishment have their wishes respected. If parents fail to dissent in writing, they will be assumed to be in favour of corporal punishment, whether or not that is the case.
Hon. Members should bear in mind a further point, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). He said that there are 30

cases currently before the court at Strasbourg of children having been beaten. It is possible that the court will rule that corporal punishment is not only against article 2 but against article 3 of the European Convention on Human rights, which states that no one shall be subject to "degrading treatment or punishment."

Mr. Cormack: I am somewhat comforted to know that the hon. Gentleman supports the convention so strongly. Can I therefore infer that he supports that part of it which gives parents the right to pay for their children's education?

Mr. Radice: I should like to look rather more carefully at that point. As far as I am aware, no case has arisen on that point in this country—

Mr. Cormack: Give a straight answer.

Mr. Radice: I am not prepared to give the hon. Gentleman a yes or no answer. My father paid for a privileged education for me. The important issue is what one does for one's children. I should like to know how many Conservative Members sent their children to comprehensive schools?

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: I did, for one.

Mr. Radice: Well, bully for the hon. Lady. I respect her more now.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: We chose the school because it was a jolly good school.

Mr. Radice: If the court rules that corporal punishment is against article 3, the Government will be forced—whether or not they like it—to ban corporal punishment. The tragedy is that the Secretary of State has not had the courage to take the only feasible and practical course, which is to abolish corporal punishment.
It is significant that there is a difference between the response of the Secretary of State for Education and Science and that of the Secretary of State for Scotland. I am not surprised that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not here today — [Interruption.] If the right hon. Gentleman's underlings would listen, I shall tell them why I am not surprised. On 10 July 1984, he told the House:
Compliance with the court's judgment … would be best secured by completion of the voluntary process of elimination of corporal punishment in education authority schools." —[Official Report, 10 July 1984; Vol. 63, c. 448.]
Some hon. Members may conclude that the Secretary of State for Scotland is relying too much on voluntary persuasion, but he has not done too badly so far. As the House knows, the vast majority of Scottish education authorities have abolished corporal punishment. Hon. Members may wonder why the right hon. Gentleman has allowed Scottish schools to be included in the Bill and why there is not a separate Bill for Scotland, given the different circumstances about which the Secretary of State for Education and Science has been telling us. At least the Secretary of State for Scotland has understood quite clearly that the game is up. Accordingly, he has written to all Scottish education authorities urging them to abolish corporal punishment as soon as possible. That was the sensible thing to do. It would be a credible posture for the Secretary of State for Education and Science to take also; it is not credible to do what he is doing this afternoon.
Not for the first time, the Scots are taking a more progressive view than the English about education. Perhaps the Secretary of State should take a trip north of


the border for a seminar on the subject. The truth is that he has ducked the issue and, instead, has brought this pathetic little Bill before us. It is an evasion of responsibility that exposes him to ridicule and derision — as we have seen already this afternoon. It has exposed our schools to an unworkable system of punishment.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: I have already asked the hon. Gentleman a question, which he said he would answer. He has not done so. He has constantly said that important decisions should be left to local authorities and school governing bodies. That is precisely what the Bill does. It may be that criticisms of the Bill are well founded, but why are the Opposition not allowing the school governing bodies—or, in some cases, local authorities—to decide this matter?

Mr. Radice: I have explained the reason quite carefully. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman was not listening. The decision of the Court of Human Rights has made it almost impossible—indeed, I would say wholly impossible —to continue with corporal punishment in our schools. By creating two classes of discipline, the Bill creates two classes of pupils. That will make discipline very difficult.
It would have been a legitimate position for the Government to have come to the House and said, as the Secretary of State for Scotland said, that the Court of Human Rights had reached a decision and that, therefore, local authorities should support the abolition of corporal punishment. The decision would still have been left to local authorities and school governing bodies, but at least the Government would have had a defensible position on discipline. Now, they do not have a defensible position at all.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: The Labour party's policy is to deprive school governors and education authorities of the power to manage schools for which they are responsible.

Mr. Radice: The hon. Gentleman had better talk to the Secretary of State for Scotland. He should try to present a logical argument. Of course, I know that he wants to defend the Secretary of State for Education and Science. We all like the right hon. Gentleman but he has introduced a "total nonsense Bill"; I quote the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway). It is not surprising that the right hon. Gentleman has been exposed to ridicule and derision.
The Labour party is against corporal punishment in principle. It is barbaric, inhumane and degrading both to the chastiser and the chastised.

Mr. Cormack: Except on the picket line.

Mr. Radice: I know that the hon. Gentleman will be voting in the same Lobby as the Opposition tonight. I suppose that that might cause him to make cheap remarks. The Labour party is against corporal punishment in principle and also because it does not work. It is not a deterrent. It does not improve discipline. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that it can be counter-productive. The Secretary of State often quotes the Rutter study when dealing with other matters and he often quotes it at me. It suggests that there is a tendency for high levels of corporal punishment to be associated with rather worse behaviour.
I wish to reassure those who are worried and concerned that abolition had been implemented successfully in every European country apart from Britain. About 90 per cent. of Scottish schools do not practise corporal punishment. It is significant that of the 16 local education authorities which have abolished corporal punishment in England, none has reversed its position. When the Conservatives came to power in Waltham Forest they intelligently dropped their pledge to restore corporal punishment. That was a sensible thing to do.
During the debate on the Queen's Speech the hon. Member for Ealing, North asked me to provide feasible and workable alternatives to corporal punishment. As the evidence suggests that corporal punishment is counter-productive, it would be wrong to provide the options for which the hon. Gentleman asks. However he has been courageous enough to call the Bill a nonsense, and bully for him. The hon. Gentleman receives my accolade, as did the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman), who is now leaving the Chamber. I wish to reassure the hon. Gentleman, if he needs reassuring, that a high standard of behaviour is linked to a considerable extent with a firm, constructive and purposeful teaching which leads, as the Opposition's amendment suggests, to an atmosphere of co-operation in which good discipline can be maintained and education quality raised.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: rose—

Mr. Radice: No, I shall not give way.

Mrs. Kellet-Bowman: The hon. Gentleman said that I was leaving the Chamber.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. The hon. Lady must not persist if the hon. Gentleman who has the Floor is not giving way.

Mr. Radice: rose—

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) referred to me and said that I was leaving the Chamber. I left the Chamber to get some extra paper but he is implying that I had lost interest in the debate. I asked him to allow me to intervene so that I could explain to him my reason for leaving the Chamber.

Mr. Radice: I fully accept the hon. Lady's explanation and now she has it on the record.

Mr. Cormack: Does the hon. Gentleman believe in corporal punishment now?

Mr. Radice: I was saying that good schools and good teachers have no trouble in maintaining discipline and providing an atmosphere and ethos that is conducive to learning. Of course problems and difficulties arise in the classroom but there are, as the Secretary of State said, a variety of options ranging from reprimands, reports, parental involvement, withdrawal, suspension to exclusion. These options are available to local education authorities and schools. It is incorrect to say that corporal punishment is essential in the maintenance of good discipline or that there are not other, more effective, sanctions available.
There are at least three major hurdles facing the Bill. First, there is Second Reading. I hope very much that Conservative Members will support the Opposition's amendment when the Division takes place.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: Certainly not.

Mr. Radice: Secondly, there is the deliberation that the Bill will receive in Committee.

Mr. Cormack: Really.

Mr. Radice: Sometimes instruction has to be basic in this place, especially when Conservative Members are listening to me. I warn the Secretary of State that we shall try to amend the Bill to make it an abolition rather than an exemption Bill — [Interruption.] Would the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) like to intervene?

Mr. Douglas Hogg: I can never resist an opportunity to intervene. Surely the hon. Gentleman is telling us what we already know.

Mr. Flannery: What a clever boy.

Mr. Radice: Perhaps it would be a good thing for the hon. Member for Grantham to be a member of the Committee that considers the Bill. If he does become a member of it, we can try to build an alliance. I can assure him that it is quite fun being in Committee. If he does not know much about that, I hope that he will take the opportunity to increase his knowledge of such matters.
The final hurdle is the other place. I think that there is a good chance that the Bill will be defeated there or amended. I suspect that that is what Ministers are playing for. If the Bill is enacted in its existing form, I must advise all local authorities, especially Labour-controlled ones, to proceed as quickly as possible to abolition because, if chaos in our schools is to be avoided, abolition will be the only sensible response.
Of course, hon. Members will be well aware that there is a Machiavellian theory that the Secretary of State has produced an unworkable Bill because secretly he wants to abolish corporal punishment but does not dare say so. I am not sure whether he really knows his own mind on this issue. It is my view that in this instance, as with student grants, the right hon. Gentleman is out of touch with the real world.
Whatever are the motives of the Secretary of State, I am convinced that over the next five years, and whether we have a Labour or a Conservative Government, we shall abolish coporal punishment. Ironically, the main architect of abolition will be the Secretary of State, who is asking the House to give a Second Reading to an unfair and unworkable Bill. I urge all hon. Members who have regard for the good reputation of this place to vote for the Opposition's amendment.

Sir Ian Percival: Like many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I deplore the Bill. However, I shall vote for its Second Reading this evening. I want therefore to take a moment or two of the time of the House to explain those two apparently irreconcilable statements. It is right that we should face the consequences of what we are doing. We are interfering with a power that has been vested in teachers for a long time by the common law of England to use reasonable force in the maintenance of discipline. It has been vested in them by common law because they were regarded as acting in loco parentis. My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) was right about that. At present parents do not have power to override that right, and we shall give them that power if the Bill is enacted. I shall vote for giving parents that power, but it is only right that we should face what we are doing.
The power of teachers to inflict corporal punishment is a right to use reasonable force in the maintaining of discipline. All this nonsense about barbarity and inhumane and degrading punishment is typical of the sort of argument that so overstates the case that it defeats its own ends. If a teacher did anything that came remotely within any of those descriptions, he would be as open to prosecution in the courts as if the power had never existed. All of us would support a parent who took a teacher to court in those circumstances. What we cannot stomach is the parent who takes to court a teacher who has used the mildest of force in the pursuit of discipline in circumstances that would try the patience of a saint. Let us forget all about barbarity, inhumane and degrading treatment and all that nonsense.
I hope that we shall not hear anyone say that we should not try to maintain discipline. Heaven knows, that mistake has been made often enough in our great country and has gone a long way towards undermining some of the virtues and values that we love so much.
The arguments of those who oppose the retention of the power to use reasonable force for the maintenance of discipline underestimate the position of the teacher. Have they ever tried to keep discipline in a class? If someone can keep discipline without using force, so be it; every parent tries to do that. However, it is arrogant to overlook the possibility that the teacher who has used reasonable force knew what was the best in the circumstances and what was best for the child involved and for the other children in the class. We must not forget the other children. Some unruly little brats stop a lot of other children getting the education that they deserve.
Another reason why I do not like the Bill is that it will cause administrative difficulties. However, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on meeting that problem head on and accepting it. The alternative was the abolition of corporal punishment. I caution my hon. Friends against making too much of the administrative difficulties argument.
It is not coincidental that those who oppose corporal punishment are seizing on the Bill and arguing that it cannot work and must lead to the abolition of corporal punishment. Those of us who wish parents to retain a choice should not fall into the trap of mulitplying the arguments of those who want to use the difficulties created by the Bill as an argument for getting rid of corporal punishment. I beg my hon. Friends to see that danger.
I do not believe that the administrative difficulties will be as great as some fear. I believe—and all the statistics show—that a substantial majority of parents favour the use of corporal punishment. If I am right, the number of parents who opt out may be comparatively small — probably a minority.
Secondly, I beg hon. Members not to be influenced by the argument that corporal punishment will necessarily cause terrible psychological problems for children. Children are a lot tougher than many of us give them credit for being. If I were a child, I should hate my parents to opt me out. The hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) laughs, but he is not a very good example for the propositions that he has been putting forward.
If I were a child, I should not want to be opted out. First, I would not want to be thought a cissy. Secondly — I went to a school where corporal punishment was used within the limits of which I have spoken, and without causing any resentment — more often than not, one


favoured the quick punishment rather than being shut up for an hour or two. There were far too many other things that one would rather be doing than being kept in detention. I much preferred to take the punishment and get it over with. As I said, I never felt any resentment and I never noticed resentment in any other boy. Let us not be too bothered about the effects in this area on children. It is far from certain that those who are still liable to corporal punishment will think that they are hard done by. I hope that parents will remember that it may be the other way round.
Yes, there will be administrative difficulties. I know a little about them because I was a Law Officer when the decision was made by the European Court and I had a part in the consideration of what should be done. However, I do not believe that the administrative difficulties will be nearly as great as some people fear. A bigger worry to me is that those difficulties may be built upon by those who wish to do away with corporal punishment.

Sir Kenneth Lewis: As my right hon. and learned Friend was involved after the decision of the European Court, can he advise us whether, if this does not work, we can go back to the court and ask permission to revert to normal?

Sir Ian Percival: Even as an old friend and colleague of my hon. Friend, I cannot advise him on that matter. It is a difficult question, and one for the present Law Officers rather than for me.
All my instincts are against what is proposed. I have tried to summarise the positive arguments, but so many of the arguments against it are so wet. There is talk about "hitting" a child of three. Has the hon. Member for Durham, North never heard of the word "smack"? Why try to make the issue emotive by talking about "hitting a child"? What is so awful about a little smack? A great swipe that knocks somebody flying is to be deplored, but emotive language unbalances the argument.
It may be felt to be unbelievable that the judgment of the European Court should have decided that corporal punishment can come within the scope of the provisions about "philosophical conviction". I thought that we all accepted that that phrase was a safeguard to prevent the indoctrination of our children with philosophical ideas with which we disagree. I applaud the British judge on the court for the clarity with which he saw the law and the independence and clarity with which he stated it in is dissenting judgment.
However, now that the court has concluded that if someone has a philosophical conviction that his child should not be subjected to corporal punishment, and there is no right of appeal, I should be interested to see whether it works the other way as well. Perhaps a parent who has a philosophical conviction that teachers ought to be able to use corporal punishment might care to take a case to the court one day. Those who say that we must give effect to the European judgment because it would allow the philosophical convictions of some parents to be met ought to realise that we ought not to go against the philosophical convictions of parents taking the other view who are just as entitled to their views.
Lastly, a Bill like this may in fact pose some danger to the cause of human rights. I suspect that every hon. Member in the Chamber, most of whom will be saying

nasty things about the Bill, counts himself as a strong supporter of the cause of human rights. But I tremble sometimes for the way in which we are going. Many distinguished people in this country would make the whole European Convention on Human Rights part of our domestic law. What of that, when we see what has happened in this case about corporal punishment and philosophical convictions? There is a good deal in what my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) said a moment ago. When we have such judgments and have to act on them, many people ask why we have to go against our own philosophical convictions because foreigners tell us to do so. I do not agree with that attitude.
The Times once carried the headline:
Fog in the Channel. Continent isolated.
We have come a long way since then. We must work with our European colleagues in this sphere, as in other spheres, if we are to further the objective, which we all share, of increasing human rights. However, there is a danger that if things go the way in which these things have gone, far from furthering the cause of human rights, we may actually put people against that cause.
Having said all that, why then shall I vote for this Bill? Because, as often happens in life, where one has few options one must take the least unattractive of them. It is not a mere matter of words for us to say that when we enter into international agreements, we must stand by them. Indeed, the decisions which it is most important we do implement are frequently those we do not like. We have no difficulty in implementing those we like. I recall the present Lord Chancellor saying that the only laws that matter are those we do not like. It is easy for us to obey those we like. We must also obey the ones we do not like.
So long as we remain a member of a convention of this type, we must implement the decisions of its court. I am glad that the Secretary of State is implementing them with the minimum of interference with the rights that we want to preserve. Parents who share my convictions and those of many of my hon. Friends will still be able to see that corporal punishment—where it is not prevented by the governors or local authority—reasonable force for the maintenance of discipline is available to those into whose care they have entrusted their children.

Mr. Clement Freud: This is a poor little Bill. My fear is that its opponents will be so disparate that there will be little happy conversation in our Lobby at the end of the debate. What we have had so far is akin to armed men attacking a jelly.
It might be right at the outset for me to make clear the position of my party. Liberal policy on education is to abolish corporal punishment, while recognising the need to support teachers more effectively in promoting good discipline. I share substantially the philosophy of the right hon. and learned Member for Southport (Sir I. Percival) on this subject, except that I do not believe that people take pleasure in seeing other people's children beaten when they themselves do not believe that that is right.

Sir Ian Percival: Nothing in the world that I said could suggest that anybody took pleasure in seeing anybody beaten, and I trust that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw that remark.

Mr. Freud: The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that there was a sort of justice in the imposition of corporal punishment.

Sir Ian Percival: I said nothing about anybody enjoying it.

Mr. Freud: If there is a sort of justice in it, and if one has a conviction that one does not want it for one's own child, I take the inference—and I am happy to withdraw it if the right hon. and learned Gentleman does not enjoy watching other people's children being beaten—

Sir Ian Percival: Really!

Mr. Freud: For hundreds of years it has been recognised that corporal punishment is not a satisfactory way of chastising children. In the 17th century a children's petition was presented to Parliament as a
modest remonstrance of that intolerable grievance.
In 1883 the Committee of the Privy Council on Education reported:
the more thoroughly a teacher is qualified for his position by skill, character and personal influence, the less necessary it is for him to resort to corporal punishment.
Dr. Arnold said of corporal punishment:
it is a defeat for the teacher and a counsel of despair.
I do not understand why we who are trying to distance ourselves from those arcane malpractices should now, when we have advanced in every other respect and when we no longer send children up chimneys or down pits, should pride ourselves on continuing corporal punishment.
A recent initiative to abolish corporal punishment came from the Plowden committee in 1967. It reported:
The excessive use of punishment of any kind should be regarded as an acknowledgment of someone's failure.
Any punishment of a corporal nature is bad, because beating a child does not produce a better child but tends to produce a more bitter and truculent one. If I believed anything else, I would not be arguing as I am.
As the only country in Europe which retains a teacher's right to spank, hit or beat children, we are not badly advised to look again. I regret the type of Bill that this is, because I am an abolitionist. Athough the measure is designed with some intent and principle in mind, rarely can a Bill have come from the Secretary of State's Department so lacking in either of those respects, so limited in its purpose and so devoid of spine. Nor have we had many Bills which will be so incomprehensible to those whom it will affect and which will please so few people because, as hon. Members have shown, it goes too far or does not go far enough.
The Bill has no guiding principle behind it. There is no indication that the concept of discipline, self-discipline or punishment has been understood by the Department, that the right hon. Gentleman has an appreciation of the problems facing our schools and teachers or of the fact that many teachers will not punish, even if their local education authorities recommend them to do so, and that many unions are opposed to it.
Worse still, there is no analysis of the moral or educational basis of corporal punishment. On what grounds, for example, are we to be the only country in Europe to retain the sanction? Why is this measure being presented when there are over 30 outstanding cases awaiting judgment in the Commission, judgments which may render this piece of legislation outwith the convention? As the hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr.

Radice) said, as we debate the Bill through its different stages we may be overtaken by events as the result of new judgments from the European Court of Human Rights.
To encourage the gradual introduction of other, more imaginative, forms of punishment in our schools is a sensible idea. I attended a school at which other boys were punished but, because the views of my family were known, I was not corporally punished. Instead, I was made to learn Le Morte D'Arthur and Chaucer's prologue, which I still know by heart.

Mr. Cormack: He must have been very bad.

Mr. Freud: There is nothing so bad about Chaucer's prologue.

Mr. Cormack: I meant that, as a boy, the hon. Gentleman must have been rather bad if he had time to learn it by heart.

Mr. Freud: I hope that the hon. Gentleman has an opportunity to make his own speech, when he can develop that, if he so wishes.
Why do the Government persist in seeing corporal punishment as a solution? What great virtue do they see in our spending our time discussing such a pathetic and potentially damaging little Bill? Although the Minister did not say so, one suspects that it is a crumb to help assuage the voracious appetites of his hon. Friends who gave him such a hard time when he had to explain his proposals on student grants, and who gave me a hard time because I was in the next Committee Room hoping for a well-attended meeting of the Friends of the British Council. Few turned up for my meeting, because they wanted to hear the Secretary of State. [Interruption.] A few came.
What will the Bill do for our schools? It will not do a lot. It will do even less for our school secretaries and administrators, because it will impose even more work on those overworked people. This will happen particularly in the small comprehensive schools, which are already facing increasing amounts of paper work. What is worse, the new work load will be such that teachers will never be sure whether the list is up to date or whether a mistake has been made. Teachers will feel considerable guilt if things go wrong.
What does the Bill do for parents whose rights, we are told, the legislation respects and who are trying to bring up their children with a sense of fairness and equity and to face the immense problem—to a child—of being "different"? Will parents need to explain that punishment and right and wrong have different meanings for different children? How will parents react to the ritualisation and bureaucratisation of punishment which the Bill will usher in?
How can the Secretary of State think that the Bill does anything to encourage greater responsibility by parents for their children's behaviour and more involvement in what happens in schools? If behavioural problems have as much origin in the home as in the school, relying on the simplistic answer of the cane seems naive.
Most importantly, what does the Bill do for the teacher? The teacher will now have to stop in the middle of administering a punishment and say to the child, "Hold on a minute while I check the punishment register. Stay there and do not do anything." The harassed teacher will then go to the school office and say, "Can I punish this child?


Are you sure it is this child, and not the child's brother? Are the parents separated? Do we have consent from both the father and the mother?"
To the teacher who asks, "What can I do when I am confronted by a violent 16-year-old?" I say that the Bill is no answer and that the child does not suddenly become violent. The cane is not the answer and, with respect, has never been the answer. The child will not be reformed by the imposition of institutionalised violence, nor will he be deterred, as all the evidence shows. We should be looking beyond the expression of his fears and frustrations. Those who support the Bill seem to think that there is a simple solution to these problems. I believe that it is time we thought again.
How will a teacher teach his children self-discipline or to understand what discipline means when he faces the scenario that I have mentioned? Surely the admittedly nebulous concepts of justice and equity are part of what we should include when we speak of educating our children.
In an intervention the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) asked the hon. Member for Durham, North whether, if he had such faith in the European Court of Human Rights, he would preserve the private sector. If I were asked that question, I would say that I believe in the retention of his private sector of education, but I believe that it should become truly independent. I do not believe that giving charitable status to a concept as uncharitable as Eton, Harrow or Winchester makes much sense.
Liberal Members reject the belief that caning is a solution to any problem in our schools. We reject the Bill, whose only point seems to be to meet a ruling of the European convention: this is laudable but misguided, in that there is nothing more—no reasoned defence and no attempt to make our schools better or to tackle the real problem of motivation and discipline. I hope the Minister will promise us that he will examine those education authorities which no longer impose corporal punishment and ascertain whether they have found an answer. I advise the House to follow the example of the Liberal party and to reject the Bill. As the hon. Member for Durham, North said, there are many hurdles to come—but none need come up. Kill off the Bill tonight.

Mr. Harry Greenway: I shall not follow the abolitionist path taken by the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud). I would like to send the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) to a comprehensive school for a couple of years so that they will really be at the "chalk face" and will know every aspect of this problem. They speak as though they have known comprehensive schools from the inside, but they have not.
I hope that I have not been too damaged by the accolade of the hon. Member for Durham, North, which went straight to my heart. The hon. Gentleman's points could be damaging to teachers, especially when he makes trite remarks about the need for teaching to be firm, constructive and purposeful. Tell that to the east end teachers struggling to control many children who are deprived and damaged in certain ways. The hon.

Gentleman needs to go beyond such broad, sweeping statements and think of the extra problems faced by teachers.

Mr. Radice: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Greenway: With respect, I did not interrupt the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Radice: The hon. Gentleman did not dare.

Mr. Greenway: I have demolished the hon. Gentleman's arguments so many times in the House that I believe I should let him off today.
There are two separate discussions about punishment in schools. The Labour party and the National Union of Teachers hold one view. I notice that the hon. Member for Durham, North did not refer to the views of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, which believes that corporal punishment is a sensible form of punishment.

Mr. Radice: The hon. Gentleman should give way on that point.

Mr. Greenway: The hon. Member for Durham, North tried to give the impression that all the unions oppose corporal punishment.

Mr. Radice: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Greenway: I will not give way at the moment.
The hon. Member for Durham, North takes an idealistic line on corporal punishment and behaviour in general, as does the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment and others who agree with him, including the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East. They say that all children are basically good and that punishment is therefore irrelevant and unnecessary. They say that it is wrong to use force to bend children to one's will. They believe that Rousseau was right when he said that children are basically self-motivated and self-motivated for good and that, if children are left to their own devices, all will be well.
The hon. Member for Durham, North should consider what the great Thomas Arnold of Rugby said:
My object will be, if possible, to produce Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make.
That point should be borne in mind.
The other view on punishment in schools is held by the practical person—the schoolmaster. The hon. Member for Durham, North has conceded that I have been in comprehensive schools. I have been involved at the top of them for 23 years, so I have dealt with every disciplinary problem, and many more, in areas such as King's Cross and Lewisham.
Schoolmasters and all teachers need a practical approach. One cannot always be intellectual about the discipline one administers, but one must be intelligent about it. I would not say that no schoolmaster has never said that corporal punishment is a cure, but it is a deterrent. If sparingly, effectively and thoughtfully used, it can be a deterrent. I am not defending massive beatings by grown men of schoolchildren, but, carefully administered, the use of corporal punishment is sensible and right as a punishment for gross bullying, vandalism, and other misdemeanours.
Corporal punishment is sparingly used today. It is slowly going out of the punishment book, but it is still there. It is wrong to argue that it should suddenly be withdrawn by a sweep of the legislative pen. Corporal


punishment has parental and teacher support. What is done in schools must have, if possible, parental and teacher support. That fundamental value must be considered in determining the use of corporal punishment. Children must always be given equal punishment. That punishment should be given when needed and should never be malicious.
What are the alternatives? What are we talking about? I will mention some alternatives that the hon. Member for Durham, North gave and some that he did not. There are sin bins, lines and extra maths. As I have said before in the House, what does it do for the teaching and learning of maths if a teacher says, "You will stay behind to do some maths tonight for your misbehaviour."? Punishment runs might be good. There is sarcasm. We have had a little of that in the House, and we all accept it. However, sarcasm destroys and damages a child's mind. That is much worse than a tap on the bottom or somewhere else. Do they advocate shouting or suspension? Expulsion has been advocated.
If the Labour and Liberal parties advocate suspension and expulsion as an alternative to corporal punishment, they should know that almost always those children who need to be in school for educational, social and other reasons are put outside by these, to their lifelong damage. Moderate corporal punishment is much better for those children.
What else do the hon. Gentleman and his Labour colleagues advocate? The juvenile court? The abolition of corporal punishment can bring the juvenile court much closer. Perhaps they advocate psychiatrists, but the psychology service is already overworked.
We must take account of the fact that most teachers are in favour of corporal punishment. My experience, which is long and well known to the House, is that some of the keenest abolitionists are the first to run to the head or deputy head's office and say, "That boy is out of hand. Will you give him the cane?" However, they do not advocate corporal punishment; they are against it, they always say.
I can give an example of a teacher who ran to me. No woman was keener on abolishing corporal punishment than that lady. She burst into my office one day at the end of school and said, "Two horrible boys have just let down the tyres of my car. Will you catch them and give them a good hiding?". I said, "Miss Jones, you have always been opposed to corporal punishment. What are we talking about?" She said, "I cannot have that. What is to be done about it?" That is what happens in some schools. The abolitionists do not accept what they advocate when they are challenged or upset. That is a telling indictment of them.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: rose—

Mr. Greenway: I shall not give way, because I think the hon. Gentleman will be replying to the debate.
The Bill is damaging because it permits unequal treatment in schools. I was pleased when my right hon. Friend said that in some areas there are schools side by side, one of which has corporal punishment and one of which is against it, which the parents know when they enter their child. It is in the school prospectus. That is the

way that we should go. I hope that the Bill can be turned in that direction. I shall support the Bill because I shall seek to amend it.
I cannot agree with the hon. Member for Durham, North and the Liberal party because they are seeking to make the Bill an abolition Bill for the slight and flimsy reasons that they have given. The Bill must be amended. People inside and outside the House have pointed out instances that cause serious anxiety. It is wrong to damage the position of a teacher acting in loco parentis. I know that the Labour party wishes to take that away altogether.
To make teachers subject to civil actions because they have behaved as a parent might in certain circumstances, as the Bill does, is to damage the finest set of working people — the teaching profession — and to make life unnecessarily difficult for them.
The objections of the much-respected National Association of Head Teachers should be considered. It objects to the Bill and says that it creates an obligation upon schools to maintain a list of all pupils who can be subject to corporal punishment. The association feels that that is an unwarranted imposition. It argues that it would have been far better if the list merely recorded those people who were subject to parental exemption. I ask my hon. Friend to take up that point and respond to it when he replies. The association says:
We remain concerned that the heads and teachers will be at risk of civil action when a genuine mistake is made in the application of corporal punishment to an individual pupil who has been exempted.
Everyone can make mistakes. The Bill contains no let-out for the head or teacher who makes a mistake.
The association also says:
We strongly believe that only those heads and teachers who act in deliberate breach of parental wishes or who are guilty of recklessness or gross negligence, should be liable to civil action.
That would be much more reasonable than the Bill's position on that matter. I argue strongly in support of heads and teachers with whom I formerly worked and with whom I am in close contact in advancing their objections.
I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East is not in his place. He was on exceedingly thin ground when he said that we should emulate Sweden and abolish corporal punishment and not be the only country to retain it. Only a week or two ago on the radio he was arguing that we should not emulate Sweden on loans. I happen to agree with him about that, but he is trying to have the argument both ways. He should see the error of his argument.
I ask for the guidance of my hon. Friend when he replies on the subject of the hysterical pupil. The Bill does not mention, and nor did my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, the teacher who has to deal with a pupil who has become completely hysterical. In schools or anywhere else, traditionally one has had to give a good hard slap across the face or elsewhere. Sometimes that is the only possible thing to do to bring back reason. That point should be covered. It should be made clear that teachers and heads who do that are covered.
May we know how many weeks will have to elapse before parents who have not replied to an invitation to opt in and accept corporal punishment will be said to have done so? There are many parents who cannot read. They could not read a letter sent to them on that point. They may have to get someone else to read it for them. There are others who cannot write and who never respond to any


letter. They are almost always the parents of children for whom punishment should be thought about carefully. I should like my hon. Friend to consider the position of such children and parents when he replies.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Does the hon. Member accept that any school that has the interests of such a child at heart will ask the parent to come to the school, when a decision will be taken as a result of discussions between the teacher and the parent? One of the objections to the Bill is that it does not do more to foster co-operation between the parent and the school, and to make it clear that parents have a responsibility for discipline.

Mr. Greenway: There are some parents who would never come to the school, even if one promised them £1,000 or a pint of beer. What the hon. Member for Denton and Redditch (Mr. Bennett) says sounds grand, but it is not entirely realistic.
My right hon. Friend made a valuable point when he said that we have to reaffirm our acceptance of the European Court of Human Rights, and its charter every five years. Presumably that gives us the right to renegotiate at that time on any point on which we have reservations and indeed to opt out altogether on such points. I hope that, as the European Court is making such nonsense of discipline in our schools, the Government will assure us that they will bear that point in mind when the next five-yearly negotiating time arrives.
How long will the established policy of the school have to last before it can be reversed? Once a school has established its policy under the legislation, will that policy have to last for a year, two years or five years, or could it be overturned at a week's or a day's notice?
How much notice will parents have to give of a change in their wishes for their child? That is another important point. Presumably they could not, within minutes of hearing that the child was to be given a smack, announce that, although they had formerly agreed to corporal punishment, they were now opposed to it.
I have no hesitation in voting for the Bill. Bad though it is — nonsensical though it is — I believe that it is amendable, and that the Opposition's policy is destructive or worse. In Sweden, children of five can take their parents to court for giving them a smack. That is the situation that the Labour party appears to advocate. We must avoid it at all costs.

Mr. Martin Flannery: I find it almost unbelievable that a group of reputedly intelligent human beings should be discussing such nonsense. The Bill is so backward as to be almost unbelievable. Those who are in favour of corporal punishment would be just as defeated by the passage of the Bill as those who, like me, are opposed to it. We are searching for convoluted methods of helping people off a hook on which they have impaled themselves. The situation is so silly that I defy anyone who has passed the infant school stage to believe what we are talking about.
If we examine what has been said repeatedly in the debate, we must assume the existence of some kind of British exceptionalism that we are arrogating to ourselves. Perhaps, like the prevention of terrorism legislation, the

Bill should be renewed every six months. From what some people say, one might think that children were creating terror on a grand scale in our schools.
We all want discipline in school. Those of us who have taught know how necessary it is. I have been opposed to corporal punishment throughout a long teaching life. I can never understand how — witout saying it in so many words — we dare to accuse all the nations that have abolished corporal punishment of enduring utter chaos in their schools as a result, while, because we retain corporal punishment, we have wonderful discipline. That is nonsense.
The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), with whom I have worked as closely as two hon. Members on opposite sides can work, has fallen for that line. How can we possibly believe that, because of corporal punishment, we, out of the whole of Europe, have discipline in our schools, while all those poor, benighted souls in the Common Market — in which I do not believe — have schools that are in a state of chaos because of the lack of corporal punishment? It is an abuse of teachers in other countries—

Mr. Forth: rose—

Mr. Flannery: I may give way later.
British exceptionalism in schools is arrant nonsense. It is akin to gunboat diplomacy.

Mr. Radice: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Flannery: I would not want the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) to feel abused. Perhaps my hon. Friend would wait a little.
As any experienced teacher knows, corporal punishment is born of sheer frustration. It eases the situation of a teacher who cannot teach any longer without caning a certain child. It is the last refuge of many good teachers; but it is the first refuge of the poor teacher.
Many years ago, when I was teaching a junior class—

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Flannery: With respect, I should like to tell my anecdote, which is absolutely true.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: rose—

Mr. Flannery: I hope that the hon. Lady will not interrupt me.
In those days, primary and secondary schools were not so neatly divided. There were junior boys and secondary boys in the school in which I was teaching, as happened in the state system. As hon. Members may remember, many teachers were needed after the war, so an emergency scheme was set up. People had only a year's training. Many of them were ex-service men. We needed them, even though they were inadequately trained. Many of them were far better teachers than they would otherwise have been, because they entered the profession after the war, after long experience of life, rather than being pushed into it by mummy.
One teacher at that school had been a lieutenant in the Navy. He was a very good person, but, as soon as there was any indiscipline, he felt that he must use the cane. Like me, he had taught primary and secondary school children. He took over a class of mine in which there were 46 nine-year-olds. I had found the class easy and friendly.
When the head asked me to move around the school and teach history and English to some of the bigger and smaller boys, the teacher to whom I have referred took over my class.
I still took the class for one or two lessons a week. On one such occasion, a little boy came and stood beside my desk and boasted, "Sir, I have been caned." I asked, "Have you, John? What had you done?" He told me about some peccadillo for which he had been caned. Another child came up with his book and said the same thing. I told him to go and sit down. I then said, "Hands up those boys who have been caned," and 46 boys put up their hands.
Caning goes on in more than 80 per cent. of our secondary schools. There is a caning every 19 seconds. It closes the channels of learning, makes it more difficult for the teacher to teach, and it has all sorts of bad effects.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Flannery: In a moment. Do not be impatient.
Most canings are contrary to law and take place in front of a full class. Often small and sensitive children are caned, and the caning makes it difficult to go on teaching them. The caning is not put into a punishment book, as it should be, and is not conducted before witnesses, except children. I fail to see how it helps teaching.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Flannery: I shall have to eventually. Very well.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that he gave his case away when he said that caning is the last refuge of a good teacher? That is precisely the argument that my right hon. and hon. Friends are using. It is a deterrent, and even good teachers need a deterrent.

Mr. Flannery: As usual, the hon. Lady is wong. Before I said that, I said that caning was born of frustration.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Look at Hansard.

Mr. Flannery: Perhaps the hon. Lady would stop interrupting me. She knows that I would never interrupt her.
Caning is born of frustration and has no impact, except a negative one. We are discussing a bizarre Bill which, like caning, is born of frustration. There is an air of panic about the Bill. Ministers have said, "The European Court of Human Rights has made a decision and we must react to it." The only real reaction is the abolition of corporal punishment, but the Tory party could not face that. It could not face abolishing one of its most cherished notions about children. The result is a half-way house which is unfair and utterly unworkable. Conservative Members will not have to implement the Bill. I wish that they would talk to the teachers who are expected to implement it. It is simply not true that teachers agree with the Bill. Even teachers who believe in corporal punishment disagree profoundly with it because they know that it is unworkable and unfair and will help nobody.
The Bill has been dreamt up by people who do not understand and have never faced the problem. They have merely a memory of what happened to them in their childhood. In many cases that was a long time ago. Teachers oppose the Bill because they know that they will not be able to implement it and that, therefore, matters will be worse.

Mr. David Evennett: The hon. Gentleman has been a teacher. Does he agree that some teachers believe that physical assaults on teaching staff by pupils are the very form of misdemeanour from which corporal punishment can safeguard them? Does he also agree that that is an important reason for keeping corporal punishment?

Mr. Flannery: The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. Statistics prove that when corporal punishment is abolished, the incidence of assaults on teachers is reduced. There is gross indignity in one human being chastised by another, when it would be an assault outside the education system. Physically punishing people up to the age of 18 is bound to arouse passions. Schools which have relied to some extent on corporal punishment will be in most difficulty if the Bill becomes law. There will have to be discussions about how to deal with recalcitrant children.
The smaller the class, the less difficulty there is in teaching. The abolition of corporal punishment will be expensive. It means having better schools, more teachers and smaller classes. Anyone who has taught knows that there is a point at which a teacher becomes a child minder. We want classes that are small enough to enable teachers to have a one-to-one relationship with pupils and to let the pupils know that the teacher is deeply interested in their problems. Opposition Members are struggling towards that goal, as are many Conservative Members. We all know that the Bill is nonsense.
We are providing that people under the age of 18 in England and Wales can be beaten, although pupils over the age of 15 in Scotland can choose whether to be beaten. Are we really suggesting that a 17½-year-old boy or girl will walk up to a teacher and say, "I want to be beaten for what I do wrong."? That is claptrap. It is insulting for the House to be expected to vote on such rubbish. We have far better things to do. The Bill is the child of a bureaucratic mind and panic.
I am sorry that corporal punishment is so deeply ingrained in the Tory party as the best method of bringing up children. I have met ex-pupils, who were never caned in my schools, boasting about how they were caned. It made them feel manly. I have seen people standing at bars saying that caning never hurt or did them any harm. Others look at them quizzically and say to themselves, "Good God! Did it not? We all have our own opinions about that." It is all so manly being 21, starting to shave, boasting about being caned and slapping on the after-shave lotion. Caning has no part in teaching, but, unfortunately, some Conservative Members will go on with it until what is bound to occur occurs.
There is only one progressive element in the Bill. It opens the way to complete abolition, when it is proved that the Bill is unworkable and backward.
Most parents do not want their children to be caned. They do not want someone else doing what they do not do. We should not equate a little get-along slap on the leg of a child with standing over him with cane in hand. The older the child, the more terrible it is to stand over him with a cane. He may even take the cane from the teacher and snap it over his knees. That causes a great deal of trouble in secondary schools.

Sir Keith Joseph: I am sure that the words of the hon. Gentleman are widely read, so I should warn him that even a little "get-along" slap on the leg would count as corporal punishment.

Mr. Flannery: Conservative members have already used euphemisms that equate caning with the sort of little get-along that I have just mentioned. That is not the way to deal with the problem. No one is complaining about the tiny losses of temper, even though the right hon. Gentleman says that they are wrong and that one should beware of them. My point is that we cannot equate caning with a little slap of that nature.

Sir Keith Joseph: I should have completed my remarks. A slap that is given as part or as the whole of a punishment constitutes an offence under the Bill.

Mr. Flannery: I accept that. I reiterate that I am totally against slapping a child. My point is that Conservative Members are equating a slap with caning as though they were the same thing. I am against both. I want good teaching. That means not beating children, but opening the channels of learning by gaining their interest and respect without beatings.
The fact that private schools are not included in the measure shows that it is fatuous. I understand that in public schools they try to conceal the fact that children are there on public money. If a parent opts out and says that he does not want his child John caned, it will become clear that John comes from the state sector and has an assisted place on taxpayers' money. There will be a stigma attached, as there is with free meals. That is one of the tiny peccadillos of the Bill.
In its attempt to preserve the backward methods of discipline of the past, the Bill falls between two stools. By doing so, it could lessen and even cause the collapse of discipline in schools. If we had a free vote, the Bill would be rejected, because both sides of the House would oppose the middle way. Conservative Members should have sufficient courage to join us in throwing out a measure in which no one believes and which could deepen rather than solve the problems in our schools.

Mr. David Evennett: I always enjoy listening to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery), and this evening I agreed with some of his points. Unfortunately, many of my right hon. and hon. Friends cannot support the Opposition amendment because of its wording, although our sympathies may be with some of the points that it raises.
I compliment my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his ministerial colleagues on all the good work that they have done since the Government took office. They have attempted to get to grips with the real problems of education in contemporary Britain. When I listened to the hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) talking about the education policy of the Labour party, I thought back to the last Labour Secretary of State for Education, who now belongs to a different party. She ruined many good schools, allowed standards to decline drastically and ignored the literacy and curriculum problems of schools. Although I agree with Opposition Members who say that the Department should improve the curricula and discipline in schools, when the Labour party was in office quite the opposite occurred.
I am thankful that since 1979 the Government have been heavily involved in dealing with those real problems. Their record on teacher quality, raising pupils' levels of

attainment, reviewing examination methods and encouraging greater parental involvement in schools lead us to look forward to future reforms which are in the pipeline. With such a good record, it is regrettable that the Government are obliged to introduce this Bill. It is a hindrance to the progress that they have made in many areas.
It is regrettable that Government time is being taken up by this so-called reform. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, it is not the Bill that he would have liked to introduce if he had had the choice. It cannot be denied that some measure to reform corporal punishment had to be introduced. Because of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, the Government must make provision for respecting the philosophical convictions about corporal punishment of parents whose children are educated at public expense.
Conservative Members believe in abiding by the rule of law. The United Kingdom is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and must, therefore, be bound by the rulings of the court, regrettable though they may be. To ignore its decisions would be to breach an undertaking in international law. Conservative Members could never suggest nor condone such a thing.
Having accepted that some measure of reform is necessary, and having acknowledged that the wishes of parents must be respected, one wonders what effect the Bill will have on discipline in schools, if it is left in its present form. I agree with the hon. Member for Hillsborough that that must be the criterion on which we judge the measure.
I am a former teacher, and I am only too aware of the difficulties which many teachers face in maintaining discipline. Education can be successful only in an atmosphere conducive to study. Such an atmosphere cannot exist where unruly children disrupt classes. Where corporal punishment is available as an ultimate punishment, discipline is generally maintained. Without it, unruly pupils may face a less painful punishment but a more damaging one.
Some of my Conservative colleagues have mentioned in interjections that an alternative may be to expel disruptive pupils, who then end up in a so-called sin bin. I regret that, because it means that a child's education may be further prejudiced. I accept that there are other acceptable methods of punishment and that corporal punishment is not widely used. It is rarely used, but it is a deterrent and an ultimate punishment.
Many people say that disruptive children deserve their fate if they go to a sin bin, but should a child's education be irreversibly harmed because of thoughtless childish behaviour which could be remedied by a few strokes of the cane or a smack, depending on the age of the child? I am not in favour of 17-year-olds being caned. It is not practical. However, it may be a deterrent and a punishment for younger children.
The decision of the European Court of Human Rights requires the Government only to make allowances for the philosophical convictions of parents about corporal punishment. The court did not say that the punishment was wrong. It did not decide that it was cruel or degrading, contrary to what Opposition Members have said.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: No Opposition Member suggested that the court said that in its judgment. We


simply referred to the 20 cases that are pending, some of them under a different article, and the possibility that the Government might have to legislate again.

Mr. Evennett: I accept that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman did not say that, but the hon. Member for Hillsborough suggested that it was cruel and degrading. However, I agree that the court did not say that—

Mr. Flannery: I did not say that the Court of Human Rights said that it was degrading. I said that I believed it was degrading.

Mr. Evennett: I accept that the court did not say that and that the hon. Gentleman did. It would appear that the Opposition are suggesting that the punishment is degrading.
The Bill seems to be leading us along the path of abolition, not by the will of the House, but because its provisions, if implemented, will cause serious problems to schools, and especially to teachers. They will have to abandon corporal punishment, and the result will be abolition by default. We cannot have it both ways. If we want greater professionalism from teachers, we must give them as much support as possible to carry out their duties. The Bill will not only fail to support them, but will undermine discipline, which is the essential foundation upon which teachers must rely.
Despite my right hon. Friend's interesting and informative speech, I am still a little confused about opting in and opting out. He suggested that letters will be sent to parents telling them that they have the option of putting their child on the register. It will be difficult, in schools where the majority of parents decide to opt their children out, to maintain a couple or half a dozen children on the corporal punishment list. That would be unfair to the parents and to the children. There is a large question mark against whether parents will write to the schools and say, "Yes, I want my child to be punished if necessary." The result may be that a minority of pupils at the school will be liable to corporal punishment. Many parents who saw that would then opt their children out, and corporal punishment in that institution would end.
The teachers unions, the press and nearly everyone has been against some aspects of the Bill. During the years in which I have been interested in education, no other education legislation has attracted so much criticism.
Parental choice has become a keynote of the Government's education policy. I hope that, having suggested to my right hon. Friend that parental choice could be restricted by the Bill, he will consider it slightly differently. We must conform with the court's ruling, but of the three options that my right hon. Friend mentioned in his speech, I wonder whether he would reconsider the option to designate schools and allow school governors and local authorities to determine whether a school should be subject to corporal punishment.
Recent legislation has forced schools to draw up lists of information about the subjects and facilities that they offer. When parents look for secondary schools to which to send their children, they have a choice—encouraged by the Government — depending on curriculum and opportunities available. The Bill might be better received if the Government allowed school governors and local

education authorities to designate some schools as corporal punishment schools and to give parents the choice of sending their children to those schools.

Mr. David Lightbown: Does my hon. Friend agree that if his proposal were enacted it would create problems for school transport? Immediately the two-mile limit for primary schools and the three-mile limit for secondary schools were breached, parents would demand, as a statutory right, that the local education authorities provided transport. That would be an expensive alternative.

Mr. Evennett: There are two sides to that argument. In urban areas, such as my constituency, it would not be a problem, because there are many schools in the area. However, in rural or outlying districts it could be a great problem. If we are dealing with a philosophical conviction — that the parent does not want his child to attend a school that has corporal punishment—the risk of a child having to travel a little further may be a consequence of his opting his child out of corporal punishment. It may involve additional expenditure, but if the Government believe in more choice for parents they should consider providing choice in this area.
Opposition Members mentioned the children who attend public schools, not because their parents pay the full fees, but because they receive a grant from the Government. As we believe in excellence in education, the opportunity for children of a certain background or from a certain area to attend schools, often of academic excellence, at public expense is greatly welcome. However, if those children come within the provisions of the Bill, schools may be less keen to take them. It will cause public schools more problems, because they will be able to maintain corporal punishment, unhindered by the Bill, for those who are not on the assisted places scheme.
I realise that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is in a difficult position, and we sympathise with him. He is obliged to introduce legislation to comply with the court's decision, and he believes the Bill to be the most practical way out of the difficulty. I understand his reservations about the alternatives, but the Bill in its present form will result in the abolition of corporal punishment by the back door. I agree completely with my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) that the Bill should be amended at a later stage.

Mr. David Young: If I, as a teacher, had received the Bill as a submission for A-level work, I should have been tempted to write on the report, "Your son has received an excellent education from us, but it is evident that he has been educated beyond his intelligence." It worries me that we have not talked much about the children. Children will accept many forms of discipline, provided that they believe it to be fair and just, and provided that pupils in the same class do not receive different punishment for the same offence. That is the basis not only of class discrimination but of legal discrimination.
What we should try to do in schools — I am not referring to social engineering, because I do not believe that it works — is to make each child feel when he leaves school that he will receive equal justice before the law. For children to be brought up in a society in which


the rules and regulations discriminate against them creates no basis for turning them into responsible citizens of the future. When I was a teacher I did not use corporal punishment, not because the lads tended to be bigger than I was — although that would have been a reasonable enough excuse — but because in many of our city schools lads are brought up in violent areas. One very often faced lads with whom even the police could not deal.
My reason for not using corporal punishment was that its use meant that I should descend to the level that I condemned. If I had used the cane as a deterrent, I should have sown in the minds of those children the belief that might was right, that the guardian of the law was not the courts but the guy with the biggest fists and the most effective punch. That is the key argument for the abolition of corporal punishment. We are referring not to the occasional misdemeanour but to serious disruption. My experience was that if lads accepted corporal punishment they did not need it in the first place.
Already a distinction is made between the punishment that is right for girls and the punishment that is right for boys. A distinction is now to be made between the parents of those boys who write to the school and those who do not. The parents who write tend to be the more articulate parents, whereas the boys who very often need help but who get the bashing have parents who do not care. They are discriminated against at home and they are then discriminated against by the first kind of authority with which they come into contact. That is no way in which to build a one-nation society.
My condemnation of this Government's legislation is that it will create a two-nation society: the privileged and the under-privileged, the articulate and the inarticulate, those who have the resources to stand up for themselves and those who do not. That is no way in which to create a one-nation society. It will not be easy to create the kind of society that we want to create in schools. It will involve all kinds of additional resources. If the Minister wishes to create discipline in schools, by which I mean the creation of a working relationship, there must be smaller classes and more teachers and more books. However, the Minister is a wrecker. There are 1·4 million children in classes with over 30 pupils and 130,000 children in classes with over 35 pupils; 30,000 teachers have disappeared in the last four years and 20,000 teachers are due to disappear in the next two years. Again the Government are skimping on a pay claim by the teachers. The Government are creating dissatisfaction among both the pupils and the teachers whom they are there to serve and to defend.

Mr. Lightbown: Is it not a fact that every year since the early 1970s the pupil-teacher ratios in both primary and secondary schools have improved?

Mr. Young: No, not according to what needs to be done.
Who else will deal with glue sniffing? The parents, the police, the courts and this House cannot deal with it. This is another among the many jobs that have to be done by teachers and social workers. Ours is the only society that seems not to recognise that the real potential of this country rests upon the education of our young people, both at school, in industry, and in our universities. Every cut slashes at the very seedcorn upon which this country depends if it is to compete with our competitors abroad.
Unless we create in our schools, because the classroom is the doorway to society, the belief that children will receive fair treatment—everybody cannot be equal but equality of treatment can be expected—and that they will not be divided from the age of five into two societies, we shall have failed in our duty to those upon whom the future of this nation rests.
I am very sad that in legislation such as this we are pandering to the maintenance of prejudice. If children do not behave in grammar schools, they can be told to go elsewhere. Where, however, does the kid from the comprehensive go? Nobody can solve that problem. There has been a great deal of discussion about handing this question over to governors. I suppose that when we next debate capital punishment we shall ask somebody else to deal with it. One of the jobs of this House is to create a better educational environment for our kids. I hope that hon. Members will support the Opposition amendment and ensure that corporal punishment is abolished. At the end of tonight's debate I, as a constituency Member of Parliament, shall be writing to my local authority asking it to make a decision that will not divide one child in a class from his neighbour in Bolton at least.

Mr. Warren Hawksley: I do not intend to follow the hon. Member for Bolton. South-East (Mr. Young) down the abolitionist road.
I am glad that the debate is taking place this week. If it had taken place last week it would have been much shorter, had the powers that be had their way. It is crucial that we should have a long and full discussion on Second Reading of what I believe to be a very important Bill.
In March 1982 I tried to raise the question of corporal punishment for young offenders by putting down a new clause to the Criminal Justice Bill. I initiated a debate that continued in Committee for 61/2 hours. The was no filibustering. It demonstrated the importance of the subject to the Committee, although one appreciates that the context was different. However, it is interesting to note that many of the arguments that are being put forward today, particularly those relating to the European Court of Human Rights, were raised then as reasons why it was not possible to consider the reintroduction of corporal punishment for young offenders.
This Bill is not concerned with whether we should allow corporal punishment. Most people think, as do I, that it may be the beginning of the end. I regret that, although I appreciate that some Labour Members hope that that will be so.
When I advocated corporal punishment for young offenders in 1982, I said that those of us who had had corporal punishment at school were none the worse for it. When the hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) was being questioned about his education, I was tempted to ask whether he had ever experienced corporal punishment. If he had answered that in the affirmative, I would have gone on to ask whether he thought it did him any harm. I do not believe that it does anybody any harm to be caned to a reasonable degree. I admit that we are talking of a sparing use of the cane, not of brutal attacks by teachers which would be open to action in the criminal courts.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Does the hon. Gentleman feel that it does any good at all when, on occasions, pupils


tell teachers who have administered corporal punishment that it did not hurt and go off to glory, first, in that fact in front of other pupils and, secondly, in the fact that they could make such a remark to a teacher?

Mr. Hawksley: I am sure that I always said that corporal punishment did not hurt when I was at school, but I have a funny feeling that it acted as a deterrent. I was slightly more careful next time about committing that offence. It is a deterrent. I appreciate that people may claim that corporal punishment does not hurt and may try to glory in it, but in their heart of hearts they must feel that it is a deterrent. It is a sanction which teachers should use sparingly, but which I believe strongly should be available to them to use as they think fit.
Is the Bill before us today because the Government disagree with corporal punishment? The answer must be no. It comes about only because the European Court of Human Rights said so in the February 1982 judgment in the case of Campbell and Cosans. We should look at the judgments of the European court. Let us spread the net a little wider. Let us consider not just that case, but the case involving corporal punishment in the Isle of Man—the Tyrer case. In both those cases the British judge dissented from the judgment which went against the British interest.
It is also interesting to note that Lord Scarman, in a judgment in another place in 1980, stressed the importance of the rule of Parliament here at Westminster. He said:
This House's decision, even though the European Court has held the rule it declares to be an infringement of the Convention, is the law. Our courts must continue to look, not to the European Court's decision but to the House of Lords' decision.
Is it in our interest that we should blindly follow a court whose judgments have nothing to do with Britain's legal system and are not even arrived at by our judges? I should say no.
Rather than push the Bill to a vote tonight, the Government should have decided to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. When that convention was ratified in 1951, we retained the right to decide that it was not for Britain. In view of the judgments that are coming forward, we should reconsider the situation. That, I hasten to add, has nothing to do with our membership of and responsibilities to the EEC. It concerns, purely and simply, the ratification by the Government in 1951.
I hope that we shall consider whether we want our law to be made in this Chamber and to be enforced by British judges.

Sir Keith Joseph: I ask my hon. Friend to bear in mind that many hon. Members had reason to welcome at least one, if not more, of the judgments of that court from which he wants us to withdraw.

Mr. Hawksley: I think that I know what judgment my right hon. Friend is thinking about, but, on balance, the argument that we should be ruled in such matters by a court in which the British judge dissented from the judgment does not appeal to me.
The right for teachers on the continent to be regarded as acting in loco parentis is not common. Although my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says that we are dealing here with a small and fine point, that whole relationship will be endangered by the fact that we are prepared to go on accepting the edicts of the European Court. If that is continental practice, I fear that that will be inflicted on us. That is wrong.
Decisions on the system that we want in our schools and the relationship between teachers and the children that they are looking after should and must be made by the House and the other place.
I shall have no option but to vote against the Labour party's amendment, which would abolish corporal punishment and therefore cannot possibly have my support; but I shall also be unable to support the Government when we vote on this important issue tonight.
My support for corporal punishment as a sanction, and my dislike of the Europeans telling us what to do in our own country, is joined in my mind by a belief—some Opposition Members may agree with me here—that the Government's proposal to create the sheep and the goats — those children who can be caned and those who cannot—is probably the worst of both worlds.
The teachers are right to say that the abolition of the cane will lead to problems and that increased expenditure will be necessary. That point was mentioned by the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East. To a certain extent, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State skirted round that point in his opening speech, but he accepted that some slight expenditure would be necessary. At this time, when education is having to play its part in helping the economy to get back on its feet, can we possibly accept any extra expenditure on an item such as this?
There are some practical problems. I can imagine a situation where, a crime having been committed that deserves to be punished by the cane, the headmaster finds that of the two children involved one can be caned and the other cannot. If it is the ringleader who cannot be caned, is it fair that the minor party should be caned? It is not.
What safeguards are there against a 15-year-old with a single parent intimidating his mother when she has to decide whether he should be exempt from punishment? When detention slips have to be returned, one sometimes hears of children forging them. What safeguards have we to prevent these forms being returned with forged signatures? Those are practical problems which must be dealt with in Committee.
I hope that the views of the National Association of Head Teachers on retaining a list of pupils who are subject to parental exemption will be considered in Committee. What punishment will be offered as an alternative? We have heard suggestions from both sides of the House. I am slightly nervous that, at a later date, some of those may be ruled out of order by the European Court if we remain a signatory to the convention.
Some people may have read in The Times today of the 16-year-old boy from Wirral who was suspended from school because he would not be caned and whose lawyers are claiming £17,000 in compensation for him. Will that be the first of many cases? If so, it causes me great concern. I hope that, when he replies, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will deal with the future of the European Court and how those further decisions will be arrived at. According to The Times, it is unlikely that that case will be heard by the judges. It is expected that it will end in a friendly settlement. If that is the case, will taxpayers' money be used to support the parents of that child who is making the complaint?
Even at this late stage I hope that Ministers will think again and withdraw the Bill, go back to the Cabinet and ask it to agree to our withdrawal from the European


convention. It is important that we retain for Britain the right to make our own decisions about how we maintain law and order.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: I find it odd that I am the sole hon. Member representing a Scottish constituency to seek to contribute to a debate that intends to amend the law of Scotland. It is odd that a proposition of this kind should not arouse the interest of either Front Bench. However, when I contemplate the reason for it a little more closely, it becomes clear that there is a certain underlying and unspoken justification for there being less interest in this debate among my Scottish colleagues than among right hon. and hon. Members representing constituencies south of the border.
When the judgment in the Scottish case of Campbell and Cosans was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights, it was recognised in Scotland that it was giving the red light to corporal punishment. Although I am not one of the greatest admirers of the Secretary of State for Scotland and have little admiration for his political courage, on this issue at least he showed the kind of leadership that ought to have been demonstrated by the Secretary of State for Education and Science. He showed a willingness to recognise that, notwithstanding the existence of a strong body of opinion in Scotland that favoured the continuance of corporal punishment — an opinion privately shared by many teachers even though many representative bodies in education were not prepared to say so publicly—he should advise local authorities to proceed with the abolition of corporal punishment. They are in the process of doing that.
The Bill seeks to change the law in Scotland and to introduce a number of bizarre anomalies. For example, a young person over the age of 16 in Scotland who is to be subjected to corporal punishment must himself say whether he wishes to receive it. In Scotland, the Bill in a sense will be a dead letter. I do not think that local education authorities will continue to accept that corporal punishment should have any place in the Scottish education system. That is a recognition of the practical difficulty of any other conclusion, in the light of the Campbell and Cosans case.
It is odd that the Secretary of State for Education and Science has not been able to resolve this difficulty south of the border in the same way that his Cabinet colleague did north of the border, and I do not find what the right hon. Gentleman said about our differences of position particularly compelling. He did not specify those differences—differences of degree or of popular opinion —on the subject north and south of the border. He did not demonstrate that there was any greater use of corporal punishment south of the border than north before the Campbell and Cosans case.
I think that the explanation lies in the natures of the two Secretaries of State. The Secretary of State for Education and Science seeks to defer to the atavistic instincts of those of his colleagues and those members of the Conservative party who wish to resist the abolition of corporal punishment at any cost. But he is signalling to his colleagues behind him that he regards this Bill as a

tiresome necessity and not as a measure which he has any great pleasure in presenting to the House. He is seeking to have it both ways.

Mr. Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman try to be more consistent? Not too long ago, people applauded the reaction of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to what his Back Benchers were saying about student grants. Is it not consistent for my right hon. Friend to be rightly concerned about and sympathetic to what his Back Benchers may be saying in today's debate?

Mr. Maclennan: If the right hon. Gentleman tried to follow the opinions of his Back Benchers on this issue he would be in dire difficulty. A range of opinions has been expressed which is so confusing that it cannot have given him any guidance. In those circumstances, he would have been wiser to rely upon his own judgment and not to twist like a weather vane, blown by the winds of the opinions behind him.

Mr. David Young: That is what we are here for.

Mr. Maclennan: If the hon. Gentleman thinks that the views of his colleague, the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Hawksley), bear the slightest resemblance to those of the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) or those of the former Solicitor-General and of any other Government supporter who has spoken, he has been only half listening to the debate.
The Secretary of State for Education and Science would be wise to consider what has happened in Scotland since the Secretary of State for Scotland issued his advice to local education authorities, because he should recognise that there is now no significant body of opinion in favour of the reintroduction or retention of corporal punishment and that the debate in Scotland is no longer about corporal punishment in schools so much as what is to be done to maintain discipline in difficult schools in the absence of corporal punishment. That is a pressing and much-needed debate.
It is important to consider whether teachers in areas of stress and deprivation whose pupils are unruly, unmotivated and capable of disrupting classes have adequate means of instilling discipline and the circumstances which enable the education of those who wish to have it and those who would be better for it if it were to proceed.
Not enough thought has been given to the other available options. I had hoped to hear about them from the Secretary of State. It is clear that the majority of local authorities in England, as in Scotland, will recognise that the Bill is wholly unworkable and wholly inequitable. Their political complexion will not matter. They will proceed step by step inexorably down the road to abolition.
Today's debate would have been altogether more constructive if the Secretary of State had addressed himself to the circumstances that are to follow abolition. Instead, he buried his head in the sand and tried to split the difference between himself and those other hon. Members who have a more realistic appraisal of what goes on in the classroom.
I want to comment on what the hon. Member for The Wrekin said about the European Convention on Human Rights and the authority of the European Court. I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's point of view that it is not wholly satisfactory for Parliament to legislate


to bring the United Kingdom into conformity with judgments reached in Strasbourg, especially when there is so much reluctance on the part of the Government even to commend the terms of the Bill.
The route around that difficulty would be the hon. Gentleman's acceptance — as many of his hon. Friends have accepted—of the overwhelming case to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into our domestic law. I introduced a Bill for that purpose during the last Session of Parliament, and enjoyed the support of a considerable number of Conservative Members. I think that 137 hon. Members, many of them Conservative, supported that principle in an early-day motion.
The hon. Gentleman is wrong to think that the principles of the convention are in any sense exotic or unsuited to this country. The convention was drafted by Englishmen in 1950 and was the product of the work of the late Lord Kilmuir, a distinguished Conservative Lord Chancellor who, at that time, was the chairman and rapporteur of the legal affairs committee of the Council of Europe on the subject of the protection of human rights. The convention was essentially a conservative measure, drawn up by lawyers well versed in the common law system and its practice. They knew what needed to be done to strengthen the protection of human rights — not abstractly in Europe as a whole, but in all the member countries of the Council of Europe.

Mr. Forth: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the United Kingdom entered a reservation against the protocol on which this whole case is based, and that that must cast some doubt on the suggestion that, even in the 1950s, the United Kingdom gave any credence to the sort of thing that has been brought before us today?

Mr. Maclennan: The protocols have been brought forward at different times, and different Governments have given assent on behalf of the British people. No doubt further protocols will be considered by the Government. Some protocols remain unratified by the Government.
There is a further respect in which the Bill is defective, which is that the issue should have been faced once and for all. It is highly unsatisfactory that this country should be dragged before the European Court of Human Rights time and again on the issue of corporal punishment—or, indeed, on any of the issues that have arisen from our alleged infractions of the convention to which we are a signatory.
In reply to my intervention earlier, the Secretary of State acknowledged that a number of cases are pending under article 3 of the convention—not under article 2 of the protocol — which may lead, in certain cases, to it being held that the corporal punishment was inhuman or degrading—

Mr. Forth: Nonsense.

Mr. Maclennan: The hon. Gentleman may say that, but he is not following the argument. Under the convention, it is possible that the infliction of corporal punishment in a school may be held to be inhuman and degrading. That fact was brought out not only in the Tyrer case but in the judgment on the Campbell and Cosans case.
The court said:
it follows from that judgment"—
the Tyrer case—
that 'treatment' itself will not be 'degrading' unless the person concerned has undergone—either in the eyes of others or in

his own eyes … humiliation or debasement attaining a minimum level of severity. That level has to be assessed with regard to the circumstance of the case.
It is quite clear that defining, in one case, that the infliction of corporal punishment is not inhuman or degrading does not end the right of another individual to take his case to the court. It is absolutely insufferable that case after case of corporal punishment should be brought before the court with the issue being decided judicially and over a protracted period. The Government must face the issue — it is time to bring an end to that form of punishment.
It is surely reasonable to study the experience not only of Scotland but of other European countries—on other occasions, the Government are quite ready to say, "We are culturally and socially close to them" — that have abolished corporal punishment in schools.
If, by some mischance, the Bill is given a Second Reading—and the SDP will vote against it—it will need to be amended if it is not to lead to the most gross of inequities and the most shocking administrative difficulties for those who have to give effect to it. I cannot envisage how the Bill can be amended to make sense. Nothing that has been said tonight by any hon. Member who has supported the principle of the Bill and has wanted to follow the Secretary of State's road has altered my view on that. They have raised questions to which there are already answers. We look forward with great interest to seeing how the difficulties mentioned by Conservative Members will be taken into account. We are highly sceptical about the Bill and oppose it in principle.

Sir. Kenneth Lewis: To cane or not to cane, that is the question—or is it? The Prime Minister is constantly saying that she does not want anything to be fudged. This issue is something which she will have to accept is being fudged—even though she is a previous Secretary of State for Education and Science. If ever there was a Bill that fudged anything, this is it.
When I was at school, if I had been told that in 50 years I would be in the House of Commons with an opportunity to do away with caning, I would have been delighted. I would have told my chums that it could not be true, but that if it did happen it would be worth waiting for.
This is about the daftest Bill that the House has been asked to pass. It has been imposed upon us by the European Court of Human Rights. I hope that the court realises the ridiculous position in which it is putting the Secretary of State. During the 25 years that I have been in the House I have voted on a number of daft issues produced by Governments, so I am realistic enough to say that I shall vote in favour of the Bill, in the hope that when it comes out of Committee it will be improved in some way. I keep my votes and abstentions against the Treasury Bench for those occasions, which will certainly occur during this Session, and perhaps in Sessions yet to come, when the Government are being daft in what they themselves are proposing. At the moment the Government are stuck with the Bill, so we are stuck with it and have to live with it: thanks to the European Court judgement.
When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduced the Bill, he said that if he had had a choice of Bill to introduce he would not have picked this one. However, his name is at the top of the Bill, I regret to say, so he must put it through the House.
A number of ex-teachers have contributed to the debate. There are many more ex-teachers in the House than when I first entered it and some will say that that is splendid. At times the place seems full of ex-researchers, ex-teachers, ex-university lecturers and others of that ilk. That can be said of Members on both sides of the House. I would merely urge that teachers should not be allowed to sway us too far when they express their views on education, let alone on corporal punishment.
I happen to believe that there is much merit in allowing a headmaster to use the cane on occasions when he thinks that it is proper to do so and when he has been advised by his teachers that it should be done to keep order. The procedure was quite different when I was at school. In those days, the teachers in the classrooms used the cane. They used it pretty rapidly, pretty heavily and pretty often. That has long since changed. As I understand it, there has to be a register in a school if caning is to take place, and the headmaster is usually the person who is responsible for administering corporal punishment. I believe that that is right and that some parents would prefer that system to continue. I accept that practice varies from area to area and from school to school.
When I read the Bill for the first time, my immediate reaction was to ask myself why the matter should not be decided by parent-teacher organisations and governors. Why should there not be a democratic vote? My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is in favour of involving parents on all education issues, and I see no reason why parents should not also be involved here.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: I am sure my hon. Friend recognises that governors of any school have the power to prevent corporal punishment being administered, by not providing a register. That is the way in which governors can exercise their jurisdiction and come to a final decision.

Sir Kenneth Lewis: As I have said, my immediate reaction was to ask why parents should not be allowed to vote on whether a school be one where corporal punishment is allowed. However, I am told that that would not be in keeping with the terms of the European Court judgment. That being so, I presume that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State does not have the option to consult parents as a group. I hope that this matter will be thrashed out in Committee—not necessarily by me—so that we may become aware of the realities.
Many difficulties are bound to be seen as likely to arise. The House will understand that this is an opting-out Bill. Let us suppose that a parent decides on behalf of little Johnny to opt out of the use of the cane for the boy at school and that little Johnny is doubtful about being opted out and cannot convince his mum that she should opt him in. The result will be that he is opted out. Let us suppose also that then his great friend at school, Jimmy, has been opted in by his mum. That means that he will be subject to receiving the cane. It is thus probable that little Jimmy will become the hero of the class. Little Johnny may well then tell his mother that he also wants the right to be caned if he does something naughty. He will have his eye on his friend who has become a hero, and he will want the same status. That is quite likely to happen among boys at school. So it is a difficulty that will arise because of the Bill.
If a parent decides to allow his child or children to be caned during one term, will he be able to take the opposite view during the following term?

Sir Keith Joseph: Yes, there will be scope for parental changes of mind. A certain number of days would have to be allowed for the change of mind to be duly established on the register or removed from the register.

Sir Kenneth Lewis: That makes the position even more difficult and confusing. There may well be a class meeting at which it is decided that all the children want to change their minds except for one or two. The pupils will then return to their parents and say, "Next year, mum, you must opt us all in for caning." The Opposition are assuming that this measure will become a non-caning Bill. I feel that it might lead eventually to the abolition of caning, but, equally, it might have the reverse effect. We do not know. Parents will be able to change their minds, and so will children, and children may press upon their parents that they should exercise their authority by agreeing with what they, the children, want.
There has been talk of public schools. An important parent suggested recently that it was a sad state of affairs that if a parent wanted his child to be subject to corporal punishment and reasonable correction he had to put his hand in his pocket and pay for his child's education. That is no longer true. More than half of our public schools have opted out of caning. Many of the top public schools no longer use the cane. They have almost totally done away with the system of canings by prefects, and a great many have also taken away the right of masters to cane. Almost all the modern headmasters who are appointed to lead public schools are non-caners.
I still believe that there is some merit in a headmaster having the right to administer corporal punishment in certain situations, but it might be thought that with so many opting out of caning it is no longer possible to have a division between schools which are in favour of corporal punishment and those which are not. There is also a division between parents. It would seem that the majority of parents are against the idea of corporal punishment, so it is clear that the Bill is the thin end of the wedge and that we may be moving to a general system of education that accepts that caning is out.
In my school days there used to be a sick-note system. If Johnny was given a sick note by his parent, he would be absolved from punishment while that note was in force, and sometimes a note had effect for a long time. Now, in this Bill we have to have a letter. I shall tell a story about a famous headmaster who is now a well-known Member of this place. He is well known to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, because he was Minister of State, Department of Education and Science until a few months ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Dr. Boyson) was a famous and effective headmaster before becoming an hon. Member. I have his permission to tell the story of what happened when there was trouble at one of the schools at which he was headmaster. Trouble was one of the things up with which he would not put.
Headmaster Boyson found out that the trouble was being caused by one of three boys. He kept on at them, investigated the matter, plagued the life out of them and would not let up. Although he thought that one particular boy was responsible for the trouble, he was still not sure. Eventually one young chap walked into his office and


voluntarily admitted responsibility. Headmaster Boyson said, "You know that means that you have got to take your punishment—six of the best."
It seemed to headmaster Boyson that that was the end of the matter. However, a week later he discovered that he had punished the wrong fellow. Being a fair headmaster, he asked the boy to come to his study and said, "I am sorry about that, but why did you admit responsibility?" The boy said, "You were plaguing the life out of us. We could not get rid of you, so I thought that I would admit responsibility and then it would all be over."
Fair-minded headmaster Boyson then said, "We cannot leave it at that. We must do something about it." The boy replied that he did not know what could now be done about it. But headmaster Boyson did. He wrote out a note on a piece of paper on his desk and said to the boy, "There you are—a credit note for six of the best." The boy carried that credit note through the next two years he spent at the school.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is giving a wide range of caning credit notes in this Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North is the first hon. Member ever to have an incident at his school enshrined in legislation.
The Bill became inevitable after the decision of the European Court. I wish those who examine it in Committee the best of luck. I do not know how it will come out of Committee, and still less how it will come out of another place. It will be fascinating to read the report of the debate there. Indeed, I hope that they are still on the television at the time of that debate so that we can watch another place debating whether to cane or not to cane.
We could do without the Bill, but the Government had to introduce it and, because that is not their fault, I shall vote for the Bill.

Mr. Ken Eastham: I have never heard a Secretary of State present such an unconvincing case for a Bill. The right hon. Gentleman made it clear that the Bill was being introduced only because the Government had to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The House ought to tell the Secretary of State to take the Bill back, have a fresh look at it and change the Government's thinking. Conservatives have traditionally been hangers and floggers, and they are dissatisfied with the Bill because they have always supported the physical violence attached to education. There are one or two exceptions who do not support physical violence in schools, but that is not the traditional attitude of Conservatives, and the titters of some Tory Members have been noticeable throughout the debate. One Conservative Member made the crazy suggestion that schools should be designated as beating or non-beating schools. I do not see how any sensible education authority could adopt such a policy.
The Opposition say that the Bill is unworkable. Even a Conservative Member said that it was a muddled Bill which resulted from muddled thinking. I go further and say that it is a loony Bill. I predict that soon after it becomes an act it will have to come back to the House for amendment, because it will be seen to be so nonsensical that something will have to be done.
Conservatives have always supported physical punishment in education. A leading Conservative politician said

that that attitude was the result of the public school and Royal Navy tradition in his party. He said that rum, sodomy and the lash were part of that tradition.

Mr. Freud: Not at the same time.

Mr. Eastham: No, not at the same time. The House knows what I mean.
The boarding schools are noted for brutality, and homosexuality is common in those establishments because of the abnormal non-family life that the unfortunate children experience during their education.
Manchester city council advises me that there is no physical punishment given in its primary or special schools and that it is rapidly dying out in secondary schools. One of the largest authorities in the country is attempting to revolutionise thinking and to concentrate more on education, which is what it is all about.
I have always contended that teachers are not policemen. Their job is to teach, and the other side of the business should come from the parents. The parents' example is usually reflected in the children. Those from good homes usually do not need the physical violence that some parents demand that their children should receive. A councillor on Manchester's education committee once told me that West Indian parents used to say to him, "You should beat my child." I do not know what that attitude has to do with education, but it seems to be the mentality of some people.
A friend of mine used to be the headmaster of one of the largest comprehensive schools in Manchester. He was a little Welshman, about 5 ft 3 ins tall, and he did not permit physical punishment in his school. Any new teacher was made clearly to understand that corporal punishment would not be tolerated. The discipline in that school was a good as, if not better than, discipline in most other schools in the city.
When I was a member of the local education committee, we received reports from various high schools, and we always noted that one of the most difficult schools in the city was one where corporal punishment was known to be meted out regularly. We resolved that once the headmaster of that school retired, we would make some changes and remove some of the violence that was taking place there.
I wrote to my Welsh friend, the little headmaster, for a considerable time, and I remember that in one letter he stated a profound truism. In effect he said, "On the day when children in any secondary school walk into the playground and tell the staff, 'We have had enough of this violence,' that is the end of physical punishment in that school." In other words, once a group of children decide that they will take corporal punishment no longer, no headmaster is able to permit physical punishment to be inflicted.
A few teachers get some sadistic satisfaction out of the corporal punishment of children. I recall a primary school where an elderly spinster teacher was known to be a most sadistic person. Even today I think of her with fear and trepidation. She instilled in her pupils not good education: only fear. Unfortunately it is not uncommon in schools for there to be the odd teacher with a violent reputation. The sooner we can put and end to such violence, the better.
I was worried some years ago by reports of what was occurring in some special boarding schools. I chaired meetings at which I had to discipline male teachers over


some of the thuggery—I must call it that—that they were inflicting on children in special boarding schools. Let us not forget that for those children, being in special schools, the situation was worse because the school was their home. They were at the mercy of their teachers. They were not able to go home and complain to their parents. I agree that it is rare to come across such violent teachers, but it went on in those days, when I was concerned with education committees. For that reason, I welcome the day when it will be illegal for corporal punishment to be inflicted on children.
Parents must accept that they, too, have a responsibility for their children in school. That particularly applies to parents who object to corporal punishment. It is not good enough for them to say that discipline is the job of the teacher. Many of our problems are caused by failure not in school but at home.
Flogging does not do anything to improve children's education. Youngsters do not learn by being afraid. Better discipline can come in a variety of ways, including better staffing, the provision of equipment, and so on. Smaller classes are vital. Imagine the problems facing a teacher trying to educate 35 or 40 children in a class. What must it be like to try to maintain mutual respect and discipline in such an environment?
We must devote more resources to education and provide children with a challenge to learn. They will then know that the local authority and all concerned are interested in their education, and they will not become rebellious and frustrated.
The abolition of corporal punishment does not mean a lawless school. There are other sanctions for noncompliance by children — and there is the ultimate sanction of expulsion. That final sanction was not unknown in the authority the education committee of which occupied my attention. Parents amd children can be presented with alternative sanctions so as to gain their cooperation.
I support the call from Europe, but what makes our schools so different from those in the rest of Europe? Why should we be less able to organise our education system than, say, France, Italy and Germany? No case has been made to set us aside from the rest.
In my experience, the teacher who is a thug is usually the most unsuccessful as a teacher. In my school days, the teacher who was a thug was always despised by the youngsters. Never to his credit could he say that he educated his pupils successfully. For those reasons, I shall oppose Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. David Amess: It is clear from the speeches of Opposition Members that the Bill has had the one effect so far of rekindling the cause of the abolitionists. The hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) has made his position clear on that issue. While I do not agree with him, I respect his opinion.
The education spokesman for the Liberal party, the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud) told us how, because of arrangements made by his family, he was exempted from corporal punishment. That being so, I could not understand his later comments about the

Bill. I should have thought that he would wish to support a measure which would allow people to opt in and out of the system.
Last year I found myself at odds with the Government over what was then the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Bill, a piece of legislation which I considered to be most un-Conservative in its nature. I regard this Bill in much the same light — as a surprising piece of legislation for my party to be introducing. Those two measures seem to be at odds with Conservative belief in the family and discipline. I am probably leaving myself open to being called unkind—I am prepared to take the risk—by some of my comments today.
My right hon. Friend is doing a great deal to improve standards and widen the opportunities available for our children, and I greatly admire his efforts, but I regard this measure as nonsense and I fear that it will prove to be a great mistake. The legislation has been introduced to fulfil an obligation arising under article 2 of the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. As that is clearly the case, perhaps we should be discussing that matter rather than the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will not argue in defence of the Bill that this convention has never been broken before.
Teachers are an important section of society, particularly in their role in influencing young people and future generations. An essential part of their job is to be responsible for teaching young people the difference between right and wrong and for maintaining discipline in our schools. We can all think of teachers who are fine academics but who are not successful in their jobs because of their inability to maintain discipline. For many teachers an essential part of their armoury is their option to use corporal punishment, and I would certainly defend that option.
No doubt many hon. Members were on the receiving end of corporal punishment during their days at school. I went to a fairly tough school in the east end of London, where corporal punishment was administered on many occasions. I believe that in the school that I attended, and because of the circumstances under which it operated, corporal punishment was an effective deterrent, and I am not aware of any damaging psychological problems suffered by those to whom it was administered.

Mr. Freud: Would the hon. Gentleman talk about the deterrent if some of his friends had not been punished and he had been punished? Is that not the most divisive action that could occur in a class?

Mr. Amess: I certainly never found that to be the case when I was at school, and I am sure that it will not be the case in the future.
When I taught I never had to administer corporal punishment, but the option was always available. My fundamental objection to the Bill is that it is unnecessary and unjust. It perpetrates and encourages injustice. One of the best definitions that I have heard states that justice is the treatment of equals equally and of unequals unequally. Our whole system of education is founded on that principle. How often have hon. Members received a reply from one of my right hon. Friends saying that an individual case must be treated on its merits? The Bill could serve as a definition of injustice — the treatment of equals unequally. What sort of justice allows two children at a school who commit the same punishable offence to be


treated differently, one receiving corporal punishment and the other, after the teacher has referred to the register, receiving detention? What sort of example does this set our young people, other than a bad example amounting to dual standards?
There are further consequences of this court judgment about punishment. The child in detention will be held by the rest of the children to have got away with his action, while the child who is caned will suffer from the thought that she or he has been singled out for special punishment for an offence that others committed as well. Grievance and dissent will spread throughout the school, with rival parents blaming the teacher, the head and the local authority. The net effect will be the lowering of standards of discipline at a time when the teaching profession is seeking to restore those standards.
I draw the attention of the House to the evidence given by the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association to the Education, Science and Arts Committee, which was investigating achievement in primary schools. That evidence demonstrated the marked deterioration in children's behaviour. At the AMMA's assembly in April 1984 Mrs. Heather Ryan stated:
Disobedience, aggression and destructiveness are no longer the exception in classrooms or playground. Aggression includes physical and verbal abuse of peers and adults.
I can back up that statement with hard evidence. Although primary school teachers are doing a heroic job in inducing social training, some of these children will enter secondary school in the same state and with the same attitudes. The Bill will do nothing to assist secondary school teachers in enforcing discipline; in fact, it will militate against any such discipline. The bureaucracy involved in the register will mean some delay in the traditional administration of justice in schools, and that is wrong.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Bob Dunn): At the moment, many schools have a number of nominated persons who administer corporal punishment to children who have committed a misdemeanour. Often the child is sent from the classroom to the headmaster's study, where he awaits receipt of that punishment.

Mr. Amess: I stand corrected. My hon. Friend appears to have found a defect in my argument.
The bureaucracy involved in compiling the register will be excessive. I am afraid that, after a time, people will become lax about registering their children on the corporal punishment list. A parent may take a particular dislike to a teacher and may be up in arms when his child is wrongly punished. We may then have a court case on our hands and bad publicity for the school.
We have the extraordinary case of a small group of people in the schools—teachers—seizing the opportunity the Bill presents to impose their will on the majority and thus destroy any access within a school to corporal punishment. Is that right? Is it democratic? Upholding the right of one person over the right of another when both rights are equally good is the negation of justice.
Before voting on the Bill, I must consider three views —the view of my constituents, of my party and of my conscience. In supporting this measure, I satisfy all three.

Mr. Stan Thorne: A number of points have emerged from the decision of the European Court of

Human Rights. Are the Government concerned with conformity—with carrying out what the court believes to be right? Are the Government concerned with force —with being forced by the court to take this action? Are the Government concerned with persuasion? Each of those questions is relevant to the subject of corporal punishment.
A long time ago, I read a book by Émile Durkheim, a sociologist. He said something of value about corporal punishment—that the punishment of children by parents is personal, but by teachers is impersonal. He came down very much on the side of those opposing the use of such punishment in schools.
Like many hon. Members, I have direct connections with this subject. For many years I was the deputy chairman of the Liverpool education committee and chairman of the schools sub-committee. Inevitably, we had to consider whether as an authority we favoured or opposed corporal punishment. We considered that point about the time we were discussing reorganising education in the city. The National Union of Teachers made it abundantly clear that it wished to retain corporal punishment. It considered that if corporal punishment were taken away, it would be deprived of a means of maintaining discipline within the classroom.
We decided as a committee—I accepted responsibility for a large share of this — to visit schools and examine the punishment book. An interesting point emerged from that study. In almost all the schools, when the punishment book was brought forward by the headmaster and examined day-by-day over a couple of years, it was fairly clear that there was a pattern — Johnny Smith had been punished on one day and Johnny Smith was punished a few weeks later. There were invariably no more than three or four names repeated again and again in the punishment book.
What did the committee deduce from that? It was apparent that pupils repeated their offences and teachers repeated their punishments. The result was that there was no change in the child's behaviour. The argument that the punishment of children is an effective way to improve discipline is not proven by the evidence that I have seen within the city of Liverpool. Hon. Members may say that that is not the same in Norwich, Portsmouth, or elsewhere. I am speaking from experience. I do not believe that Liverpool is unique. A handful of repetitive punishments tends to establish that corporal punishment is not a cure for the indiscipline that exists in many of our schools.
The debate within Liverpool took place when the committee was considering secondary school reorganisation. Two grammar schools, which were in a fairly well-placed area in terms of their intake, were being amalgamated to form one comprehensive school. The headmaster of the boys' grammar school had abolished corporal punishment several years earlier. The girls and boys grammar schools became a comprehensive school. We wondered whether the headmaster of the boys school would change his decision about punishment for indiscipline when the school had a different catchment area.
I visited the school about seven years after it was established as a comprehensive because there was a change of headmaster. Being a governor, I took the opportunity to visit the school. When I raised this subject with the teachers, they said that they had not found it


necessary to return to any form of corporal punishment. They had disciplinary problems—no school is free of them—but they dealt with them differently.
To pass a Bill which will result in some children in some schools being subject to punishment and other children in other schools, or in the same school, being free of it is unfortunate. It will make life extremely difficult for teachers. It may be suggested that we are interested not in teachers but in the discipline of children. That is the teachers' problem. We should be talking to teachers and to organisations such as the NUT and the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association. If the Department of Education and Science or the Select Committee on Education and Science were to set up a thorough investigation of the problem of corporal punishment and indiscipline in schools with the right to make recommendations — as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) when he referred to the size of classes—about the resources available for schools, the whole range of problems and how best to provide education, I suggest that we might have meaningful discussions with teachers about the problem.
According to recent information—I shall no doubt be corrected if I am wrong — the NUT has shifted its position on this matter. Originally it was in favour of corporal punishment. I do not know why it has changed its views, but its experience over recent years probably tends to establish what I have said: that the same pupils are being punished repeatedly and it does not deter them or improve relations within the schools.
I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for having been given the opportunity to take part in the debate.

Mr. Robert Key: We are debating this issue not because we want to but because we have to. We should perhaps debate discipline in schools regularly. It is a great shame that the Benches are so empty, when this is an issue which must affect all of us. That the debate is taking place at all is the result of a disciplinary admonition by the European Court, which has been much referred to today. The Government have responded by producing the Bill—something which many people find unpleasant to debate.
I had expected that hon. and learned Members would come scurrying from their courts this afternoon to tell us why we, as laymen, should throw out the Bill on some legal or constitutional ground. We might have expected some arguments from the anti-European lobby. I have other arguments in mind. We will not leave the European Community for the sake of letting some of our teachers beat other people's children. That old chestnut would be an excuse, not a reason. We could do worse than ask ourselves why discipline is better in other European schools, where no cane is employed. It might be because there is a stronger form of family discipline and responsibility, which is perhaps lost in this country. It might be something to which we should be looking in the future, rather than lamenting the passing of the cane, which I suspect will be the result of the Bill.
As a child in the 1950s, the backs of my bare legs—short trousers of course—were hit regularly with a ruler

as an aid to learning mathematics. It was entirely counter-productive. Later, school prefects administered an automatic cumulative points system for enforcing discipline, punctuality and tidiness at school. I must admit that I failed the bed-making test. The boy who beat me is now an acclaimed film producer, and the school is all the better for having changed the system. At about the same time, my eldest brother was doing his national service. The Queen visited his barracks by train, and the day before was spent by those national servicemen sandpapering the railway lines. On the day itself, they were usefully employed painting the grass green.
I mention these examples to illustrate two important principles. First, a sensible teacher never sees physical violence as an aid to learning, and rarely as an aid to discipline. Children whose work falls short of acceptability can usually be separated into the idle, slovenly and disobedient, and those whose academic progress needs encouragement and incentive. Secondly, though teachers of every kind and generation recognise discipline and indiscipline when they see it, the consequences and punishments, mercifully, have changed, along with the demands and perceptions of those in authority. Calls for a return to national service often come from those who remember the daily routine bounded by the automatic discipline of Queen's regulations. The services are different today, and so are the schools.
In the 17th century Samuel Butler said:
Love is a boy, by poets styled;
Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.
We have heard about the distinction between a smack and a caning. There have been occasions when my own children have felt the physical representation of my wrath. That does not mean that I caned them, or sought corporally to punish them. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Sir I. Percival) is a most gentle and distinguished Member of the House. He presented us with many arguments, but I have to say that my experience leads me to different conclusions.
In 16 years as a schoolmaster, I only once caned a boy. It happened in my first year in the profession. That was the system. It was loathsome. It was humiliating for both of us. For the rest of my teaching career, I neither needed nor used the cane. Indeed, after I moved south of the border, I was not allowed to use it. A distinguished headmaster said to me this weekend that people who cannot control children without recourse to physical assault should be in some other business.

Mr. Forth: I have listened to my hon. Friend's speech with rapt fascination. Does he agree that we do not in fact need any legislation? He has just given the perfect example of a system that works. Either the teacher makes his own decision whether or not corporal punishment is efficacious, or the school or the local authority does so. Why do we need legislation?

Mr. Key: We have no option in the matter. We must produce a Bill of some sort. In my view, the Government have got it as nearly right as is possible.
In all our best schools, whether in the maintained or the private sector, the cane is not used. Conversely, in the more difficult schools and the more deprived local communities, the cane is used more. The use of corporal punishment is an excuse for failure to attack the root causes of indiscipline. That is not a reason for continuing to support it.
I regret to say that many head teachers who say that they have not used the cane for years and would not do so will not come clean with their parents and children, on the ground that they still need to have a deterrent in the cane cupboard. That is a strange moral argument and a negative approach to discipline. A number of headmasters and teachers have begged me not to identify their schools because this is a sensitive issue. What are they afraid of?
The Bill is so dotty that it could safely be supported by abolitionists as well as by retentionists. It is a clever Bill. It is not what it seems. However, we should not underestimate the opposition to the Bill. Of parents with children at primary school, 54 per cent. are in favour of retention. Of parents with children at secondary school, 67 per cent. favour retention. Only 36 per cent. of teachers favour abolition, against 52 per cent. who are retentionists —the majority of them women.
Great strides are being made by the teaching profession in all areas of discipline in schools. Teachers are not helped by the silly, ideological and political excesses of local education authorities, nor by strident and negative lobbying by pressure groups. Some hon. Members still believe—basing that belief on their own school days—that there can be no discipline without corporal punishment. They should remember that they were at their secondary schools—whether in the public or the state sector— for only four or five years, some years ago, when the demands on schoolchildren were very much less and the problems facing parents and teachers were fewer. It would be encouraging to think that my hon. Friends would take note of the views of the small number of us who spent much longer in the world of schools. Parents had sufficient confidence in us then to entrust their children to us. I have tried to teach the sons of several right hon. and hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, whose admirable son was a model pupil.
It is always dangerous to judge schools today by one's own experience as a child. Indeed, I have some reservations about the Government's proposal for more parental involvement in schools. I have seen teachers' morale lowered and progress delayed, both on school governing bodies and on local education authorities, by well-intentioned but reactionary governors trying to recreate what they believe to have been the happiest days of their lives, some 30 years before. I predict that the Bill will meet opposition of that kind in the other place.
What are the alternatives? With what could we replace corporal punishment? In the schools where, as we are told, it is used two or three times a week, it is said that the system is good for certain children, often those whose parents do not support the teachers or the schools. Where does one draw the line? Should one cane girls? Is 10 years old too young? Is 16 too old? One must draw a line somewhere. The issue cannot be fudged. Teachers who use the cane often say that it works best on pubescent 11 to 13-year-olds. However, the Secretary of State identified that group this afternoon as perhaps unsuitable for caning.
Who still uses the cane? Is it the older teachers who have always done so? Do women teachers have more discipline problems and refer children on to senior management for a semi-automatic beating? In my experience, the best disciplined schools usually rely on a series of steps. The more steps that the teacher can apply, the better. Schools which have tried withdrawal classes for disruptive pupils have found that that is a rather doubtful

solution. Children often like being sent to a withdrawal class with other children who have offended the social code of a school. Similarly, suspension from school can be popular among the children whom it is designed to improve. More successful in my view is withdrawal of freedom and privileges in school. That can often disrupt family life and force parental attention on to the problem, and that is one of the keys to discipline.
Another point that is often overlooked is the folly of moving teacher to pupils, rather than the other way around. I know of one teacher who, in a school of 1,700 children, taught in 11 different rooms during the week. That school had problems. The teacher is now working in another school where he has his own classroom, which he can personalise and which strengthens the bond between children and teacher. The system works. That school has fewer problems.
We should not forget the importance of resources in schools. Staff numbers matter, not only from the point of view of supervision, but from that of the positive role of pastoral care. Many pastoral heads of year in our schools have only four periods a week for pastoral care. That is not time enough in which to deal with 180 children. Often academic teachers are rewarded with pastoral work. Both aspects of their career suffer, and so do the children.
Those are management problems, but nothing is as important as the tripod on which successful teacher recruitment depends. An experienced teacher from a comprehensive, which is not in my constituency, told me only yesterday:
Two of our worst teachers are the best qualified men in the school".
Teaching depends on three things — academic ability, aptitude to teach and attitude to education. It was never true that those who can, do and those who can't, teach. Much more should be done to encourage positive attitudes to discipline and responsibility in schools. I have mentioned a few alternatives which work, but there are many more. Much more needs to be done in teacher training and retraining. I shall never accept that there is no alternative to corporal punishment. There most certainly is, and it works.
The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud) said that there was no underlying principle to the Bill. He is wrong, because if the Bill has a principle it is a democratic one. This is the most democratic option that was open to the Government within the narrow range available. There has been a voluntary elimination of corporal punishment in Scotland. That should be a lesson to us all. The Bill is important because it means that there will be no heavy hand from Whitehall telling local education authorities what to do. Education authorities can phase out the cane, as can governors. Parents will effectively have to opt in, as far as I can understand it, if their school or authority operates a register. If parents cannot be bothered to write in, they will be opted out by default. That is a matter for debate, which we might have to consider closely in Committee. I should say that it is a matter which those who are on the Committee will have to consider carefully.
Among the implications of maintaining a register is the time and money involved in maintaining it and the good will of teaching and non-teaching staff, which will be under additional strain. That is a valid point for the


teaching unions to argue. They are mostly abolitionists, so I am surprised that they do not support the Bill on that ground alone.
I believe that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State means what he says about strengthening the role of parents, as is explained in his Green Paper on parental influence in schools. The Bill gives parents a choice and requires them to get appointed or elected to governing bodies if they wish their views to prevail. It also requires them to get elected as councillors and on to the local education authority to be sure of getting their views over. If there is one thing wrong with local democracy at the moment, it is that people do not take it seriously and therefore do not vote, and that the people who make the most noise do not wish to stand and take on the onerous tasks involved in being on a local authority.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State knows very well—more of us should realise it—that the Bill is not really about caning. It is about who runs the schools and the future of discipline in them. The hard-line opponents of abolition are not addressing themselves to the issues that face parents and teachers in 1985—nor are the hard-line egalitarians who insist on throwing out the baby with the bathwater by abolishing speech days, prizes and every other simple incentive to which children respond so naturally. We all respond to a mixture of sticks and carrots, and if we abolish sticks we shall need more carrots, not fewer.
The Bill is not about beating children, but about the whole structure of discipline and responsibility in schools. It has always been clear that the Government are concerned with standards and with an extension of responsibility towards schools, teachers and parents. That is why schools now issue prospectuses, why my right hon. friend wants more parent-governors with some direct financial control and why teacher appraisal is not just about removing bad teachers but about making good teachers better.
The Bill, expedient and dotty as it might seem, will concentrate all our minds wonderfully. I believe that we should give it a Second Reading.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next hon. Member, I should say that five hon. Members still hope to speak before the winding-up speeches start at about 9.15 pm. I appeal for brevity so that all five hon. Members can get in.

Mr. Mark Fisher: It is a pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key). He made an excellent speech in favour of abolition and then baffled the House with a bizarre, perverse and tortuous argument in support of the Bill. If it was an attempt to get on the Front Bench, we should welcome him there, as he has sane and liberal views on discipline. He would be an embellishment to the Front Bench but I fear that it will take more than such perverse logic.
Undoubtedly the hon. Member for Salisbury would have agreed with Roger Ascham. As a former school teacher he is probably one of the few hon. Members who knows who Roger Ascham was. He was the tutor to Queen Elizabeth I. As a former teacher, the hon. Gentleman will

probably remember Roger Ascham's work entitled "The Scholemaster", which was one of the first on educational theory. He referred to corporal punishment with an enlightened attitude for his day. He wrote:
Even the wisest of your great beaters do as oft punish nature as they do correct faults.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees with that. Unfortunately, we have heard a great deal of noise from Conservative Members who profess to be great beaters, but they are not among the wisest of their kind. They seem to have learnt nothing in the past 400 years. In supporting the Bill, which is an utterly ill-considered compromise and which satisfied neither them nor Opposition Members, they do no credit to their case or to the seriousness of the subject.
When I read the Bill, I thought that there were considerable drafting problems. I am sorry to have missed the Secretary of State's speech but I gather that he gave way a good deal on the drafting implications. I also understand that he has sorted out many of them. I look forward to reading his speech tomorrow, and perhaps examining the drafting in greater detail in Committee.
The implementation of the Bill has taxed the House. That is right, as it will create many problems, not least for children who, as many hon. Members have said, will now find that they are punished differently for the same offence. That is the worst possible example of justice and effective discipline for children. I am also worried about implementation in regard to teachers. If a head teacher is faced with two children, one of whom he is allowed to beat and the other of whom he is not, what is he to do? Should he beat one and not the other, knowing that he is behaving unfairly, unreasonably and unjustly, or should he amend the punishment for both children although his professional judgment—in my view mistaken—is that he would be correct to beat both? It is nonsense that he should change his professional judgment because the parents of one child do not want that child to be caned.
There is also a problem with what is to go on the register. How are parents to be communicated with? I understand that the Secretary of State said that a letter would be sent home. Is it to be sent by post? That would be expensive. Moreover, what would happen if, by chance, the Royal Mail did not get through and the parents did not receive the letter?

Mr. Freud: Nobody gets beaten.

Mr. Fisher: On the contrary, I understand that parents have to opt out and therefore they must receive the letter and return it. The vagaries of the mail might determine whether a child is on the list. There are also difficulties associated with recording the views of parents. What happens when parents are separated or divorced or indecisive? What happens when the father takes one view and the mother takes another? What will happen with children in care?

Mr. Dunn: When there is a divorce and parents live apart, the view of the parent who wishes the child to be exempted will prevail.

Mr. Fisher: I am grateful to the Minister, but it would be helpful if that were made clear in the Bill. Perhaps it can be amended. The views of parents in regard to step-parents and foster parents is also a contentious isue. If the Minister wants to amend the Bill to clarify the matter, I hope that the Government will table such an amendment.
Legal responsibilities if things go wrong with the implementation of the Bill are also a vexed issue. I understand from clauses 2 and 3 that governors have the responsibility to maintain the register. Presumably, if a child is beaten in error, even if it is not the error of the governors in maintaining the register—it could be a clerical error by the school secretary —the governors will be responsible. Will a parent whose child has been beaten against his wishes and his record on the register be able to take a suit for battery against the governors? That would be a thoroughly unsatisfactory position. That is a thoroughly onerous responsibility for governing bodies, which may meet only once a term.
The shambles comes about because of the Secretary of State's dilemma. He consulted, and more than 100 professional bodies and people responded and said that his three options were all rotten, but that this option was the most rotten and unworkable of the lot. Despite that response, he introduced this measure. That is perverse in the extreme. Conservative Members ask what else the Secretary of State can do, and argue that he is circumscribed by the European Court. That is not true. Other European countries have abolished corporal punishment. He could have taken a straightforward abolitionist line and solved his problem. Instead, he is frightened of his Back Benchers. He is wrong to be frightened of them, because he has taken the wrong decision.
Labour Members are almost unanimously in favour of abolition, both on the principle and because it is the only effective and efficient option. Because Conservative Members, the beaters, have spent a lot of our time discussing this matter, it is important to state the principal case for abolition. Corporal punishment is beating. It is the infliction of bodily pain and the punishment of the body. It does not address the mind, which has occasioned the offence. Would Conservative Members inflict corporal punishment? As the hon. Member for Salisbury said, it is an extremely unpleasant task. I doubt whether many of them, being gentle souls despite their misguided views, would wish to do it. I doubt whether they believe in beating pets.

Mr. Dunn: The hon. Gentleman served on a local education authority, and he speaks with vigour. Does he not think that those arguments should take place in the council chamber of a local education authority, so that others may be persuaded of the rightness of his case? The local education authority should not rely on the strong hand of central Government dictating that it should abolish corporal punishment by law.

Mr. Fisher: That is a feeble argument. The Secretary of State is introducing a measure to change discipline in schools, and because he cannot bring himself to abolish, which he knows in heart of hearts to be right, he seeks to devolve the responsibility to local government. As the Government have a responsibility to respond to the European Court, they should abolish corporal punishment. They know that the principal argument for abolition is correct.
I am sure that Conservative Members do not believe in beating dogs. Why then do they believe that beating children is such a good idea and so suitable? Judicial beating was abolished in 1948. The Army, showing an amazing degree of prescience and sanity, abolished

corporal punishment in 1868. Why should it still exist in schools? What is it about children that makes them susceptible to violence? Is it that Conservative Members believe that children can understand only violence, and that they cannot understand reason? That is nonsense. It is not justifiable in principle and it is not effective in practice. No schools or authorities which have abolished corporal punishment have regretted it. There is no sign that discipline in those schools is any the worse for it. Indeed, the evidence that exists, suggests that discipline improves.
The only argument that has force— it is surprising that it has not been used — is the in loco parentis argument. One form of logic is that if parents have the right to beat children and schools are in loco parentis, schools have the right to beat children on behalf of parents. That is the logic behind the non-exemption that allows schools to continue beating pupils. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary nods as though he agrees, but it is a poor piece of logic.
If parents hit their children, they do so in the heat of the moment, in the context of a close and, I hope, loving and complex relationship, in the confidence of knowing each other, and with an opportunity to forgive and recreate that relationship. If a child is beaten in school it is right that it should be beaten in this way — in a cool, objective judicial atmosphere, possibly by the head, whom the pupil may not even know, a long time after the event, and with no opportunity to restore the relationship. There is no similarity between the position of parents and schools.
For schools to suggest to parents that it is intelligent to give their consent to beating, and to approve the idea of generalised consent is extremely unintelligent and unsatisfactory. Parents cannot know the context of the offence, what the alternatives were, what was passing through the mind of their child or what the position in the classroom or school was. Yet they are being asked to give generalised consent by opting on to the register for beating, or off it for being exempted. The Government should have addressed themselves to a proper structure of discipline.
The Government should have provided an entirely new contract for teachers and children. They should have said to the education world, "We shall give you a decent context for education. We shall give you books, buildings and resources so that you as teachers can do a good job. We shall give you a good pastoral context to create good discipline in schools." The Government should have said to the children, "We shall give you a society in which it is worth being educated, worth having the prospect of a job and therefore worth behaving and getting the most from education. In return we shall expect discipline and self-discipline from all members of the school community."
Instead, the Government have given teachers poor buildings, too few materials, too little in-service training, large classes, no supply teachers and insufficient staffing levels to maintain a good pastoral organisation. Teachers are overstretched and undervalued. Recently, the Secretary of State told them that their standards were too low and that they were failures as teachers. No wonder teachers' morale is low.
How do pupils react in such a position? If the Government manifestly do not rate and value the teachers, why should pupils respect them? Throughout the country, pupils are looking at the estates on which they live, the


schools where they are educated, and the prospects for them when they leave school and saying, "If the Government do not rate us or teachers, why should we care or behave?" The Government have removed the carrot of the prospect of worthwhile education. Now they are removing part of the stick. The Government are inadvertently fostering any discipline problems that exist by their educational neglect. By their faulty Bill they are compounding those problems and making a bad position worse.
The only way to achieve better discipline, better relationships and a better atmosphere in schools, is through smaller classes, a full and proper pastoral structure, and teachers with time to spare to form relationships with pupils and to know what their problems are.

Mr. Pawsey: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the pupil-teacher ratio in our schools is at the highest level ever, and that the per capita spending is also at its best level? How does he reconcile those two points with the picture of real privation that he paints? That is not the case. Unfortunately, and I am sure unintentionally, the hon. Gentleman is misleading the House with his 18th-century description of education.

Mr. Fisher: The hon. Gentleman referred to the highest pupil-teacher ratio, when he meant the lowest pupil-teacher ratio. It has undoubtedly come down, but like all those who read much and understand little about education, he does not understand the difference between pupil-teacher ratios and class sizes. Classes are extremely large. As pastoral roles have improved and developed in schools from a rudimentary start 10 years ago, class sizes have not improved to reflect the undoubted improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio. If the hon. Gentleman doubts my description of low morale in schools, he should visit the schools in his constituency and ask teachers whether they believe that the Government value them, and whether their morale is high or low. He will obtain only one answer: that morale is low because teachers feel neglected. If they feel neglected, so do pupils.
The only way to achieve discipline is to have a better atmosphere, smaller classes and pupils who believe that education is worth while. That will come, but certainly not from this Government. It will come only from a Government who have a vision of education and who care about the future of children. Only in that context can good discipline be fostered.

Mr. J. F. Pawsey: I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) too far down the road that he signposted. Since he talked about my constituency, I should tell him that, perhaps unlike him, I take the trouble to visit the schools in my constituency regularly. I visit most schools at least once every two years, so I have a good idea of what happens in schools. Teacher morale is not as low as the hon. Gentleman would have us believe. Generally, teachers appreciate what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is doing—for example, with teacher assessment.
The hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) said that the Bill was unworkable, but, in the immortal words

of Mandy Rice-Davies, "He would, wouldn't he?" He is an outspoken abolitionist, so clearly nothing in the Bill commends itself to him. Therefore, most of his speech should be dismissed for what it was.

Mr. Radice: Do not consider the argument.

Mr. Pawsey: The argument was persuasive, but unfortunately the hon. Gentleman had not bent his mind to it. He usually contributes much to our debates, but on this occasion his intellect was not focused on the problem before the House.
When considering the Bill, my worst prejudices about Europe come to the surface. The judgment by the European Court of Human Rights has helped neither Britain nor the House. We have been making our own laws for hundreds of years without the benefit of European advice and interference, and our laws reflect our customs and our traditions. The latter are not always those of France, Italy or Belgium. However, the United Kingdom has signed the European convention on human rights, and it must abide by the consequences of that signing.
The Bill sets out to meet the requirements of the European Court and to make the best of a bad decision. The decision was made not by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, nor by the Government, but by European judges. The only alternative to this Bill is the complete abolition of corporal punishment, which is clearly unacceptable to the majority of hon. Members. No doubt we shall see after the Division this evening who is right on that point, as on all the other points that we have discussed.

Mr. Ian Grist: Does my hon. Friend agree that it would have been better to have not a whipped vote but a plain statement of the opinions of hon. Members?

Mr. Pawsey: My hon. Friend knows as well as I do that, sadly, it is sometimes thought necessary to impose disciplines on hon. Members, in the same way as we seek to impose them on others outside.
The alternative to the Bill is the total abolition of corporal punishment, which I believe would be a retrograde step. It would not endear us to parents or teachers, and it would leave schools without one of their principal deterrents — a deterrent that helps to counter defiance. Opposition Members have not said what they would put in place of corporal punishment. They have tried, but they have not proved their case. Until they do so, and provide a viable alternative to corporal punishment, the status quo should remain.
It is not necessary for the cane to be often used and, as I know, it is hardly ever used in the best schools. The knowledge that it exists is usually sufficient. We have heard the argument this evening that what is good enough for European countries should be good enough for us. Hon. Members have said that if European states can manage without corporal punishment, why should not Britain? That is a short-sighted argument that does not take into account the fact that, in the United Kingdom, the teacher is in loco parentis. That is not understood in Europe, and that is one reason why the European Court's judgment was in error. The court did not appreciate the basic point that, in Britain, the teacher stands in for the parent.
In the United Kingdom, the cane is the traditional punishment for misdemeanours. In many European


countries, the punishment is suspension or detention. In France, if a child is suspended for poor attendance at school, the social security benefits that they would normally attract are also suspended for that period. The punishment affects not only the child, but the rest of his family. Do hon. Members put that forward as a viable alternative? Of course not, because it would be impossible to introduce. In eastern Europe, the child's misdemeanours are posted on the notice board of the factory in which his father works. One can imagine the outcry, especially from Opposition Members, if we suggested using that method in the United Kingdom.
Sovereign nations have evolved methods of maintaining discipline in schools, and the United Kingdom has evolved its method—

Mr. Fisher: Beatings.

Mr. Pawsey: No, not beatings. That is an emotive word. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that the usual terminology is "caning". I noted that during his speech he did not use the word "caning". It was either a mistake or a deliberate attempt to mislead the House into believing that most schools administer the sort of treatment that he may have experienced at his school.
Opposition Members have not suggested a punishment that would provide an effective deterrent in place of corporal punishment.
Parents need to understand that if corporal punishment is abolished and their child misbehaves, he will probably receive more detentions and a greater loss of privileges. In severe cases, that may result in positive suspension from school. When parents know that those are the alternatives, I believe that they will decide that corporal punishment is the lesser evil.
If, for example, in country areas a child is put into detention, it may mean that he misses the school bus home. In many country areas the only bus to get the child home is the school bus. Such punishment would undoubtedly exceed that of corporal punishment were it to be used in country schools.
We should not seek to minimise the difficulties created for head teachers by the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. I appreciate the difficulties surrounding the need to record the names of those who can be caned, but I do not believe that they should be overstated. When one considers the alternatives, I believe that, problems or no problems, we should support the Bill. I believe that parents will decide not to opt out of the system. Because they will recognise the clear need to maintain school discipline, I believe that parents will co-operate with head teachers and teachers. In view of the increase in parental choice that the Bill provides, I believe that parents will opt in. I further believe that my right hon. and hon. Friends have tried and, in general, succeeded in salvaging a working measure from the wreck of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights.

Mr. Sean Hughes: If the debate has served one purpose, it has emphasised the fact that the sooner the House of Commons is televised the better. The country will then have an opportunity to watch and listen to some of the antediluvian arguments which are put forward by Conservative Members.
The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Hawksley) said that this is a very important Bill. I believe that it is trivial

in the extreme, compared with the real needs of education. Some Conservative Members are obsessed by such punitive issues as this. I believe that they are totally irrelevant to educational problems and that it is one of the most negative ways of looking at education, its development and its problems. Having listened to Conservative Members, with the honourable exception of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), one would think that the use of the cane and the strap is crucial to the maintenance of standards and discipline. What utter nonsense. Of course the Bill has been forced upon us by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights. However, as my hon. Friend the Minister for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) said, it should have been used as an opportunity to get rid of an uncivilised, punitive irrelevance.
To put my comments in perspective, I could never be considered to be a trendy, middle-class ex-teacher. I believe very much in educational standards and quality. I am consious of how a deprived environment distorts educational aims. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) asked us to consider the plight of the harassed teacher in a deprived area. I suggest the cane is not the way in which to overcome deprivation. I taught for 13 years in one of our most deprived areas. I noted that the hon. Member for Ealing, North suggested that the hon. Member for Cambridge, North-East (Mr. Freud) should spend a few years in the classroom of a large comprehensive school. That is what I did. It was an area of massive youth unemployment, whose educational ethos was non-existent, but the school in which I taught did not practise corporal punishment. That experience over 13 years taught me that one cannot whack excellence into children, or beat them into examination success or cane them into discipline.
I do not want to exaggerate the incidence or extent of corporal punishment. Indeed, I am not very convinced by some of the sociological arguments against corporal punishment, although I accept that corporal punishment might cause psychological damage to children. I simply do not know whether the occasional whack promotes in a child the belief that might is right. In my case it did precisely the opposite. However, I accept that the worst schools overuse corporal punishment and that it adds to an atmosphere of violence. I accept equally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) mentioned, that when he is at the end of his tether even the most civilised, rational, decent-minded teacher can be goaded into contemplating meting out a good hiding to somebody.
Although I accept that the environment distorts educational achievement and behaviour, I accept, too, the concept of original sin.
Why then do I oppose corporal punishment? It is simply because the sight of a 40-year-old man hitting with a stick the outstretched hand of a 12-year-old boy is distinctly distasteful and wholly unnecessary. Conservative Members have said that it is a deterrent. All the evidence points to the fact that it is the same child who is repeatedly beaten, caned or strapped, as my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. Thorne) said. Either that means that, apparently like some Conservative Members, they like it, or that it is not a deterrent.
I am opposed to corporal punishment because I hold it to be uncivilised. My experience tells me that it is unnecessary. It distracts us, as it has done today, from


debating the real reasons for educational deprivation and inequality. That is why I hope that the House will support the Opposition amendment.

Mr. Eric Forth: Unfortunately, I must restrict my comments severely because of the hour, but I want to put forward an argument that we have not yet heard. I want to return to the genesis of this measure and to see why it is that what we are told is inevitable is not so at all.
Let us go back to the original debate in the Council of Europe in 1951 when the origin of this measure was considered. We have been told repeatedly that the people who wrote the European convention on human rights and the protocol on which it is based had in mind corporal punishment and its effect on children. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I wish to quote the words of Mr. Teitgen, the rapporteur in the Council of Europe at the time. He said:
it is essential for our Protocol to protect the rights of parents in the field of education and teaching against the danger of nationalisation, absorption, monopolisation, requisitioning of young people by the State".
In other words, the intention of the original protocol to the convention had nothing whatever to do with corporal punishment in schools; it concerned the post-war context and the fear of the then generation of undue political influence in the educational process.
That is bad enough. It is also relevant that even then, and in the light of that, the United Kingdom entered a reservation to the protocol on which the judgment is based, distancing itself from the protocol as then expressed and using such vague and rather difficult words as "philosophical conviction".
On the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights we have the excellent dissenting opinion of Sir Vincent Evans, the British judge in that court. He said that the original aim, as I have set it out, and as the words of the rapporteur suggest, give no basis for the judgment which was passed down by the court against his dissenting opinion.
The way in which our continental friends conduct their legal proceedings takes no account of the original intention of those who pass the law. They feel free to graft on to that law a meaning which may suit them at the time. Therefore, 30 years after the original passing of the convention and the protocol we find a judgment by the court which bears no relationship to the circumstances of the 1980s.
It is for that reason that I believe the oft-quoted convention and protocol, as laid before us, do not have the strength, relevance or directness which have been suggested to us over and over again during the debate. Therefore, we are entitled to decline to accept the solution that has been offered to us and that has been so rightly criticised on both sides of the House. We are right in asking the Government to think again, probably at great length, and possibly to return with another half-baked solution. In other words, we should have time to reconsider whether we should have anything to do with the European convention on human rights, which was created 30 years ago in such different circumstances; to reconsider whether we should still be signatories to and supporters of the protocol which was based on a different time and in

different circumstances; and to reconsider whether Britain should allow itself to be subject constantly to interpretations and reinterpretations of conventions and protocols—116 of them—which have been cumulatively created by the Council of Europe over the years.
It is for that reason, and that reason principally, that I shall be unable to support the Government in what they have brought before us today. I look forward to the day when we seriously reconsider our membership of the Council of Europe and our adherence to the European convention on human rights in order that we may obviate and eliminate the repetition of an unfortunate case such as we have before us this evening.

Mr. Humfrey Malins: This has been a long debate, but I am reminded of the words of an old schoolmaster friend of mine, Mr. Tom Peacocke, who said:
For the boy, the stick. For the politician, the red hot poker." I think that he had it right on one count at least.
Unfortunately, the Bill falls between two stools. It introduces for the first time a two-tier system and, in trying to please everyone, I suspect that the Government are likely to end up pleasing no one.
The argument is not about the merits or otherwise of corporal punishment. I support corporal punishment, provided that it is used appropriately, and I believe that my view is widely shared. As a punishment it has the merits of being immediate, quickly over with and easily associated with the offence, and in many cases it is far less damaging to the pupil than its logical alternatives of expulsion or suspension. Those latter punishments often cause long-term resentment in children and long-term damage to a child's education, since they may interfere with examinations. Apart from all else, when a school suspends or expels a pupil, it is an admission of failure by the school. In the borough of Croydon, we tend to suspend some 300 pupils per year, often for long periods, with resultant disruption to their education and family life.
There are a number of problems with the Bill. First, it appears that either parent has a right to object to corporal punishment. One parent may be strongly in favour, the other may be against. The "against" view will prevail, which may cause rifts and divisions in the family.
The situation could arise where a parent objected to corporal punishment for one of his two children but not for the other. That could only result in divisions between children in the same home.
At the school, for an identical offence two children might be punished in different ways. Is that not bound to cause divisions between children and between staff at the school?
Given that public and parental opinion can change, the possibility is there of a child being subject to corporal punishment or not, as the case may be, at different stages in his education.
The message is clear. A two-tier system of punishment is divisive both within the school and within the family. Children respect principles of certainty, consistency and, above all, equality of treatment. Passing the Bill opens the way to enormous divisions and resentments when those well-established principles are breached.
The extraordinary picture emerges of two children, perhaps the best of friends, starting together on the same day at the same school. From the moment that they enter


the school gates together, they are subject to wholly different regimes. In punishment, the word "choice" does not seem to be wholly relevant. There is much more merit in the word "consistency".
I put a few short points to the Minister. There is reference in the Bill to "a parent". Who is a parent? Does a divorced parent qualify? Even though he has no rights of access to or custody of the child, can he exempt a child of his from corporal punishment? If a child is in care, does the local authority make the decision, or does the parent or either parent make the decision? If a child is subject to a supervision order, is the position different from that of a child under a care order? Who carries the can? Who makes the decision? We have not heard about these matters, and I hope that we shall do so before the debate ends.
I am sure that no hon. Member has ever had any difficulty in distinguishing between the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, established by the convention, and the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, established by the Treaty of Rome. However, for understandable reasons, the two courts are inevitably confused.
Many people will think that the Bill is being foisted on us by the EEC, which it is not. Even the Daily Telegraph political staff slipped into that error last Wednesday when it said that the deferment of the Bill had averted a second rebellion over the EEC. We must distinguish between the two courts. It is not an EEC matter that is being foisted upon us.
We must recognise that a large number of people in Britain are beginning to resent some of the interference from the Court of Human Rights. We are beginning to feel that these are matters that we can best deal with ourselves. We do not have a great deal to learn about human rights from a number of the signatories to the convention. A bill of rights for us and a withdrawal from the convention are matters for another day.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: The Government have been on a hiding to nothing in this debate, and there has been very little support for them. Even the Secretary of State did not really recommend the Bill to the House with great enthusiasm; he was obviously only too well aware of the many internal inconsistencies in it. He found little support on the Conservative Benches. At best, Conservative Members said that they would support it because it is making the best of a bad job.
I used to be a teacher and I now regret that I sometimes inflicted corporal punishment at one or two schools, where the ethos expected it of teachers. I always felt ashamed when I caned a pupil. I also felt that somehow I had failed to carry out my duties as an effective teacher. Equally, as a school governor, I was responsible on one occasion for pressing very hard and successfully for a teacher to be appointed particularly and specifically to reduce the amount of corporal punishment in that school. The level of violence in that school was unacceptably high. Unfortunately, the teacher turned out to be disastrous, which was unfortunate for him and the school.
I have no illusions that getting rid of corporal punishment in any school is an easy task. It must be done over a period, especially where a school has consistently relied upon it. I also believe that we cannot effectively teach in an atmosphere of fear. Conservative Members

who have spoken about deterrence are really saying that schools should work through an atmosphere of fear. It is essential that we get rid of that element from our educational system.
We must remember that one of the key features of education is teaching young people self-discipline. The approach of many head teachers, teachers and local authorities who have set deadlines of six or 12 months for the ending of corporal punishment is the correct way to tackle the problem. The Secretary of State for Scotland gave a good and effective lead when he suggested that all local authorities should aim to phase out corporal punishment within 12 months. It is commendable that all but two regions in Scotland are moving in that direction. The reality is that in the two regions which, apparently, will try to retain corporal punishment, the number of children who are caned or strapped is extremely small.
We must measure the Bill against that background. It is a tragic missed opportunity because it fails to abolish corporal punishment and to make positive proposals for improving school discipline. Shortly before Christmas the Opposition suggested that the Bill should be subject to the Special Standing Committee procedure so that Parliament could have an opportunity to discuss school discipline, find ways to deal with the problems created by the court's judgment and come forward with positive proposals to incorporate in our legislation. It is sad that the Government refused. No doubt they anticipated trouble with Conservative Back Benchers.
The Secretary of State talks almost continually about wanting to raise standards in schools, and one of the keys to high standards in good behaviour. The right hon. Gentleman should have sought by means of the Bill to give schools positive help in achieving good behaviour. Instead, he has offered them muddle and compromise. The Bill does nothing to help schools improve the discipline of pupils.
At the very beginning of the debate I pressed the Secretary of State to tell the House which parent would have overriding responsibility. The Bill does not tell us which parent will have the right to decide if two parents have different views. The Minister has said in an intervention that that issue will be dealt with in the regulations. That may be, but unfortunately the Bill does not give the right to one parent or the other. If, as the Secretary of State said earlier, the one parent who wants to opt out of corporal punishment for the child will have the right to do so, how will this be done? The right is not set out in the Bill and it seems that this issue will have to be dealt with in the regulations. That is unsatisfactory.
The Secretary of State said that he had a relaxed view about who should count as a parent. I think that the Bill should have referred to parents or guardians. That is the term that is used in much of our family legislation. It is not especially appropriate to lay down who will have responsibility for carrying out this parental right only in the regulations. It would be far better to set it out clearly in the Bill in order to make it clear that responsibility lies with the parent or guardian. As the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Matins) said, we need to know the position of the child who is in care, for example.
We have heard during the debate about the opt-out procedure. It has been put to me by several people in education offices that the procedure that is set out in the Bill is the most difficult one to administer. It relies on a letter being sent from the school to the parent. It relies also


on an assumption that the parent receives and understands the letter. The Secretary of State has told us that if necessary the school will send a second letter, but we all know that in practice some children move from one household to another. Sometimes they are looked after by a granny, sometimes by an aunt, sometimes by one parent and sometimes by the other. In these circumstances it will not be particularly easy to establish in a court of law that a letter was sent by the local authority to the parent.
Another issue will be whether the letter has been returned by the parent. The pupil concerned may insist that the letter was handed in at the school office. How will the school office record that the letter is with it? It has been put to me by those who are involved in education administration that it would be much better to have the alternative system which would require the school to have in its possession a letter that states, "I am the parent of X and I agree to corporal punishment being administered to my child if it is necessary." The Minister must address himself to these practical issues. I understand the political reasons that led him to go for the opt-out system but in administrative terms the opt-in system is much more positive and easier to deal with by the authorities.

Mr. Freud: I have been following closely the hon. Gentleman's remarks. Surely an opt-in system would mean opting in by both parents, step-parents, guardians and aunts and grandparents where necessary.

Mr. Bennett: I accept that argument. I do not want to spend too long trying to improve the Bill. However, I have some sympathy for the local authorities which will have to administer a measure that will cause them problems. I is a measure that the Minister should not have introduced.
I wish that the Secretary of State had dealt more fully with suspensions. It is disturbing that many local authorities and school governing bodies have gone increasingly for suspensions. This seems to be a development within the education world and is not the result of the phasing out of corporal punishment. Several Conservative Members expressed the fear that considerable harm could be caused to children who are kept out of school for long periods as s result of suspensions.
The Government argue that the Opposition should not oppose the Bill because we favour giving powers to local authorities. The Government claim honour for the fact that they are returning power to local authorities, schools and parents. We would have more sympathy with that argument if the Government were prepared to allow local authorities to have control over their own finances. But the Government say to local authorities that they are taking away control over expenditure and other important matters and giving back only the small right to make decisions on such matters as corporal punishment. I welcome the support of the Liberal party and the SDP for our reasoned amendment.
The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) misrepresented the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers when he said that it did not object to the Bill. The union favours corporal punishment, but it objects to the Bill. It is one of the many groups involved in teaching that feel that the legislation is unworkable.

Mr. Greenway: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Bennett: No. The hon. Gentleman would not give way. He said that he favoured corporal punishment because it was quick. In most secondary schools and in many junior schools it is no longer quick. There is almost always a member of staff designated as the person to administer corporal punishment. In mixed schools, punishments for boys and for girls are administered by different people. The member of staff has to be found and usually wants an explanation of why corporal punishment is to be administered before even considering it. In many instances, it is a long-drawn-out process. The hon. Gentleman should reconsider his view.

Mr. Greenway: In my experience, corporal punishment is very quick. However, that was not the defence that I advanced. I said that it was a suitable deterrent and punishment for grossly serious crimes, such as bullying and some forms of vandalism. I said that the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers supported corporal punishment. I did not mention its position on the Bill.

Mr. Bennett: I am sure that in practice corporal punishment is not quick. If it were such a good deterrent, we would not have the problems of bullying and bad behaviour.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) made the valid point, echoed by other hon. Members, that we should look at the experience of other countries. No one has suggested that discipline in European schools is a major problem because they do not have corporal punishment. Discipline in almost all the other countries of Europe is as good as, if not better than, the discipline in our schools, even though there is no corporal punishment in those countries.
The hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) mentioned the sanctions that were available in France and some other countries. I am told that the withdrawal of social security benefit because of a child's non-attendance at school is a rarely used sanction in France.

Mr. Pawsey: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, even if it is used rarely, the threat exists, so the deterrent effect is the same as that of the cane being available in schools? The cane may not be used frequently, but the fact that it is available puts children off. They will behave.

Mr. Bennett: That is a doubtful argument. On the whole, deterrents which are not used fall into disrepute.
The hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) suggested a system under which one school would practise corporal punishment and another would not. Probably all hon. Members accept that that would not be a practical solution. There are already too many problems when parents want to choose between schools and we find that what they want does not fit in with what is available.
The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Hawksley) expressed great enthusiasm for the deterrent—he spoke of his school days — and suggested that corporal punishment had not done him any harm. Presumably it did not deter him, either. I suggest that he defeated his own argument.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Mr. Young) was rightly concerned about the way in which pupils would perceive the situation, and he


questioned whether they would think the arrangement fair—a point echoed by almost all hon. Members. Two pupils involved in the same offence would not feel it fair if one was punished in one way and the other was punished in another. Several hon. Members pointed out that, even worse, two pupils involved in the same type of offence might find that the one who had committed the least serious aspect of the offence was subject to corporal punishment and the other not. That would be seen by pupils as unfair.
The hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding (Sir K. Lewis) pointed out that more than half the public schools, the better ones, had already abolished corporal punishment.
The hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) referred to injustice resulting from different treatment. He should reflect on the situation that would be created if, for an offence, one pupil got one type of punishment and a second received the cane. Both would feel that injustice had occurred. But mistakes are made in schools, and it might be discovered later that neither pupil should have been punished. One of the two may have been given detention or some other punishment which had not yet been inflicted, but little could be done about the pupil who had already been caned. Thus, great resentment could arise.
The speech of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) came as a breath of fresh air and enlightenment from the Government Benches. He probably summed the Bill up best when he said that it was so dotty that it could enjoy support from hon. Members on both sides of the House. Conservative Members who take the trouble to read his speech will note with interest his account of the well-run school in which corporal punishment is unnecessary. That is the type of school for which we should be striving. It is regrettable that the Bill will do little positive in that direction. Rather, it will help to produce a bureaucratic nightmare.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) spoke of the problems and cost involved in writing to parents. He also spoke of the errors that can occur. Mistakes also arise because several pupils on the register can have the same or similar names. It is not too difficult to avoid confusing, say, two John Smiths. One is aware of Smith being a common name; hence, the teacher is wary of making mistakes. But it is surprising how often quite uncommon names crop up and there are two children with the same name.
Are we to have "John Smith the cane" and "John Smith the detention" as the names by which teachers remember which boy is which? I suggest that the possibility of error will be horrendous and that, in practice, the majority of schools will decide to abolish corporal punishment rather then get involved with that type of bureaucracy.
The Government should take this measure away and go to the local authorities and say, "We want you to get a debate going in your area so that we can establish a framework for discipline by which parents and schools are clear about their roles when trying to ensure good discipline." Teachers should examine the alternatives to corporal punishment. There should be debate on how the schools administer those alternatives, the role of suspension in schools and, if a pupil is suspended by the school, the duty of local authorities to ensure that, after

a short period, the child is found another school to attend. In some authorities pupils remain suspended for a term or more, and that is most unsatisfactory.
We need much more discussion between local authorities about the implication of withdrawal groups in schools and what happens if a local authority creates what one might call "sin bin" schools. What are the implications for Warnock-type integration if we try to integrate children from maladjusted schools into other schools? What are the implications of excluding pupils for punishment reasons?
I suggest to the Government that they advise local authorities to address themselves to the question of how to create an atmosphere in all their schools where self-discipline prevails, where good behaviour is the order of the day and where all teachers and senior staff need to spend little time in enforcing discipline. That has already been achieved in a few schools, but it needs to be achieved in all our schools. The Bill does nothing to achieve that end. The Government should take the legislation away and bring forward proposals to abolish corporal punishment and to create a positive framework within which good discipline can evolve in our schools.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Bob Dunn): We have had a long debate on a difficult subject. We have heard speeches from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Sir I. Percival), my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), for Frith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), for The Wrekin (Mr. Hawksley), for Stamford and Spalding (Sir K. Lewis), for Basildon (Mr. Amess), for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) and for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Malins), and by the hon. Members for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud), for Bolton, South-East (Mr. Young), for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), for Manchester, 13 lacicley (Mr. Eastham), for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery), for Preston (Mr. Thorne), for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher), and for Knowsley, South (Mr. Hughes). In the time available to me I shall attempt to deal with the points of substance and political dogma, and I undertake to write to those hon. Members whose points I cannot answer now.
The House will know that I have looked forward to this debate since the Queen's Speech last November. In recent weeks, the words of George Canning have gone through my mind. He said:
Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe;
Bold I can meet—perhaps may turn his blow;
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh! save me from the Candid Friend!
But I had no need to quote those words tonight because this debate has been amiable, good natured, cheerful and enthralling. It has been a debate on a serious and difficult subject, and the Government have faced a dilemma.
The debate has been good natured, except for the contribution by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central who overstated his case by the language he used and the intemperance he brought to it. One had the idea that Wackford Squeers had not died 100 years ago, but was alive and well and replicated throughout our education system. The draconian and irresolute picture painted by the hon. Gentleman is not one of fact today.
Some Opposition Members have accused us of bringing forward a Bill which is not based on any principle. That


was referred to in a most elegant speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key). The Bill is based upon a principle which should unite every Member of the House — the principle that local education authorities should decide whether to permit the application of corporal punishment in their schools, and those local authorities that so decide will allow school governors and parents to decide the matter in each school.
If any parent wishes to have his or her child exempted from corporal punishment, he has the right to seek that objective. We have debated this subject in the knowledge that some of the views expressed have been at odds with the views of the people we represent. I am convinced that if I were to have an opinion poll in any part of my constituency, I should find that the vast majority of my constituents are in favour of the retention of corporal punishment in schools, as are those represented by Members on both sides of the House.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Has the Minister asked the GLC?

Mr. Dunn: The hon. Gentleman brings a peculiar affectation to our debate. I always think that he has the fervour of a poodle dog attempting to seduce a wellington boot. If he is to learn from my answers, he should remain silent for a little longer.
The Daily Telegraph, in its column written by John Izbicki, pointed out that a Gallup poll showed that 69 per cent. of the people polled believed that discipline had become worse in our schools; 19 per cent. thought that it was about the same; and only 3 per cent. thought that it had improved. That is the background to the debate and the Second Reading that we shall undoubtedly give to the Bill.

Mr. Forth: Does not the point that my hon. Friend has made reinforce the fact that the European Court of Human Rights in its judgment is as far from the opinion of the people of this country as many of us have suggested? Is that not the problem that the Government have had to face? How does he relate the results of the opinion poll that he has given with the court's judgment?

Mr. Dunn: I do not intend to do so tonight, if my hon. Friend will forgive me. I am sure that his remarks about the European Court of Human Rights will be noted by my right hon. and hon. Friends who have responsibility for those matters.

Mr. Fisher: We are overcome by the Under-Secretary's theatrical and seductive winks to the Opposition Front Bench. When he is taking these straw polls in his constituency, does he consult teachers and head teachers? Will he confirm that the vast majority of those whom he is expecting to administer corporal punishment are against the Bill?

Mr. Dunn: If I thought that were the case, I should be the first to admit it. The hon. Member has known me long enough to accept that. I am conscious that last year a sample poll mounted by NOP for The Times Educational Supplement showed 52 per cent. of teachers interviewed to be in favour of retention, compared with 36 per cent. in favour of abolition. In the north, and the midlands where the hon. Member has his constituency, the comparative figures were 64 per cent. and 27 per cent.

Mr. Radice: Is any teachers' trade union in favour of the Bill?

Mr. Dunn: I dare say that if I researched for long enough, I might find one. However, the question that the hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) should address is whether those trade union leaders are acting in the interests of the members they purport to represent. Probably they are not doing so.
The Bill is before the House because of a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Campbell and Cosans. We cannot accept some judgments and discard others, picking and choosing between those that we like and those that we do not like. The case was vigorously defended by the United Kingdom, but the judgment went against us. We have an obligation to abide by the judgment of the court, and that obligation will be fulfilled by the scheme that the Bill introduces. Failure to act would place us in breach of a treaty obligation and expose us to the possibility of a succession of cases under the European convention on human rights and the further possibility of compensation awards.

Mr. Silvester: I am sorry to give my hon. Friend such cause for pause, but if he feels that we are under an obligation, are not the Government also under an obligation—before we commit ourselves to a Bill which my hon. Friend has hardly defended with vigour—to provide time for the House, for the first time in history, to make a judgment on whether we wish the European Court of Human Rights to operate in that way?

Mr. Dunn: My responsibility tonight is to steer the Second Reading debate to a satisfactory conclusion. The matters to which my hon. Friend refers are for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, whose attention to such matters is known to all.
We cannot pick and choose between judgments, and we must act to give effect to the ruling. Our obligations on the matter date back to 1951, when the Government of the day accepted the court's jurisdiction in cases brought by another state in which the prior agreement of this country had been obtained. In 1966, the Labour Government accepted the right of individuals to make complaints under the convention. That acceptance has been renewed by successive Governments. The latest renewal was in January 1981 and was to last for five years. Consequently, we must give effect to the ruling.

Mr. John Home Robertson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Dunn: I do not have much time. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman.
The Opposition parties would have preferred our action to take the form of abolishing corporal punishment. Opposition Members who have spoken tonight appear to be united in their determination to abolish corporal punishment, whether they belong to the Labour party, the Liberal party or the Social Democratic party.

Mr. Maclennan: Will the hon. Gentleman explain why no Scottish Minister has participated in the debate, even though the Bill applies to Scotland? Am I right in saying that Scottish Ministers are in total disagreement with the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend, believing that corporal punishment should be abolished — advice that they have already given to local authorities?

Mr. Dunn: The hon. Gentleman is churlish. We have been supported throughout the debate by a representative of the Scottish Office.

Mr. David Young: Can the Minister name any education authority which supports the educational apartheid proposed in the Bill?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Dunn: I had some difficulty in hearing the hon. Gentleman, but I undertake to answer his question in the fullness of time. I was not able to hear the hon. Gentleman's speech, but if he asked that question during the course of it, I undertake to give him a genuine reply.

Mr. Home Robertson: rose—

Mr. Dunn: I must press on.

Mr. David Young: rose—

Mr. Dunn: I have many questions to answer.
The Opposition parties have made it plain that they want corporal punishment abolished. We accept that the Bill is a response to the European Court's ruling. It deals with some problems and not with others. The Labour party has made it plain that it would solve the problems facing us, if it were in government, by abolishing corporal punishment. It is consistent with the theme that we have heard often since I came to the House in 1979. Labour would abolish corporal punishment, private education, the assisted places scheme and local authorities' discretion whether to permit corporal punishment in their schools. The Labour party has the answer to everything—the abolition of circumstances in which people get together and do something of which the state does not approve.
Our theme has been consistent with the view of many parents and teachers in England and Wales who want the sanction of corporal punishment to be retained. We believe that the Government should not legislate to force abolition. That centralist line might appeal to Opposition Members, but it has no appeal to the Government.
The court's judgment was not about banning corporal punishment, but about the right of parents to exempt their children from such punishment. We have proposed such a right. We examined the alterntives carefully. On close examination, the possibility of some schools being able to use corporal punishment while others could not—the so-called dual system—proved utterly impractical. Having rejected abolition and the dual system, an exemption scheme was clearly the only practical solution. As we have said, it might not be perfect but criticism has greatly exaggerated the difficulties. An exemption scheme can work. Schools which wish to retain corporal punishment will make it work, and I am sure that the common sense of parents and schools will make an exemption scheme workable.
Some people have claimed that the system is unfair. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has exposed the weakness of that argument. Schools which wish to offer exemptions while retaining corporal punishment should be free to do so. That is the basis of the Bill. It confers rights, whereas Opposition Members, who made it clear that they are committed to abolition, would like to withdraw rights.
Several detailed questions have been asked and some of them are matters for consideration in Committee. I look forward to joining battle in Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford referred to a dual system. I am sure that the House agrees

that such a system would be costly and difficult to administer. It would entail virtually doubling existing provision so that parents could gain respect for their convictions without losing the range of school choice that they have now. That would be impossibly expensive. Moreover, such a system would create practical day-to-day difficulties in the allocation of pupils to schools. Indeed, the problems for local education authorities, especially those serving country districts, would be colossal. The House would need to face the fact that children in a particular school would have to be treated differently because of the change of status in that school. That would pose unique and particular problems for the parents of those children during that difficult transitional period.
Hon. Members referred to the problems of cost and asked whether the scheme would be expensive to administer. We accept that it will involve extra work for schools which attempt to administer the scheme.
My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury asked about the children of military or diplomatic personnel who are being educated in the private sector. Public moneys received for that purpose will be regarded as emoluments of salary and will therefore not be covered by the Bill. We took clear legal advice on that matter. I hope that my hon. Friend, who has a great interest in that matter, will be happy with my explanation.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough asked what the Bill meant for children in receipt of assisted places. We envisage that the question whether a child should be liable to corporal punishment will be put to parents after the pupil has been accepted by the school. If the parents of such a child seek exemption, the school will be obliged to respect their wishes.
Independent schools will be free, but not obliged, to offer the choice of exemption to all parents. The hon. Member for Hillsborough mentioned the stigma that may be attached to assisted-place children. His interpretation and general thrust are wrong. There is no stigma attached to being a recipient of a right. The parents of an assisted-place pupil will have a right which will be embodied in legislation. I accept that some independent schools will extend that right to all parents. In such circumstances, the assisted-place pupil will not be distinguished from others.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North referred to the problem of parents changing their minds. There will be a requirement for some delay—a few days—before a change of mind in favour of exemption can come into force. My hon. Friend also asked what would happen if the school changed its policy. He accepts, as I do, that a school can change its policy at any time, but clearly it will not wish to continue to change its approach.
This has been an interesting and thoughtful debate. We were invited earlier to join battle in Committee. As I have already made clear, I relish the prospect of victory both in Committee and tonight. I promise hon. Members whose points I have not answered that I shall answer them. I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against the Opposition amendment and in favour of this important legislation.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 168, Noes 298.

Division No. 78[
[10 pm


AYES


Abse, Leo
Anderson, Donald


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Archer, Rt Hon Peter






Ashton, Joe
Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Hughes, Roy (Newport East)


Barnett, Guy
Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)


Barron, Kevin
John, Brynmor


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Beith, A. J.
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Bermingham, Gerald
Lamond, James


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Leadbitter, Ted


Boyes, Roland
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)
Lofthouse, Geoffrey


Bruce, Malcolm
Loyden, Edward


Buchan, Norman
McCartney, Hugh


Caborn, Richard
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Campbell, Ian
McKay, Allen (Penistone)


Canavan, Dennis
McKelvey, William


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
Mackenzie, Rt Hon Gregor


Cartwright, John
Maclennan, Robert


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
McNamara, Kevin


Clarke, Thomas
McTaggart, Robert


Clay, Robert
Madden, Max


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Marek, Dr John


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Mason, Rt Hon Roy


Cohen, Harry
Maxton, John


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Meacher, Michael


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
Meadowcroft, Michael


Corbett, Robin
Michie, William


Cowans, Harry
Mikardo, Ian


Cox, Thomas (Tooting)
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Crowther, Stan
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Dalyell, Tam
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Nellist, David


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)
O'Brien, William


Deakins, Eric
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Dewar, Donald

Park, George


Dixon, Donald
Patchett, Terry


Dobson, Frank
Pendry, Tom


Dormand, Jack
Penhaligon, David


Douglas, Dick
Pike, Peter


Dubs, Alfred
Powell, Rt Hon J. E, (S Down)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Prescott, John


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Radice, Giles


Eadie, Alex
Randall, Stuart


Eastham, Ken
Redmond, M.


Evans, John (St. Helens N)
Richardson, Ms Jo


Fatchett, Derek
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Faulds, Andrew
Robertson, George


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)
Rogers, Allan


Fisher, Mark
Rowlands, Ted


Flannery, Martin
Sedgemore, Brian


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Sheerman, Barry


Forrester, John
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Foster, Derek
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Foulkes, George
Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)


Fraser, J. (Norwood)
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


Freud, Clement
Skinner, Dennis


George, Bruce
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Snape, Peter


Golding, John
Soley, Clive



Gould, Bryan
Spearing, Nigel


Gourlay, Harry
Stott, Roger


Hamilton, James (M'well N)
Strang, Gavin


Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Straw, Jack


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Taylor, Rt Hon John David


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


Haynes, Frank
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


Healey, Rt Hon Denis
Tinn, James


Heffer, Eric S.
Torney, Tom


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Wallace, James


Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)
Warden, Gareth (Gower)


Home Robertson, John
Wareing, Robert



Howells, Geraint
Weetch, Ken


Hoyle, Douglas
Welsh, Michael





White, James



Williams, Rt Hon A.
Tellers for the Ayes:


Winnick, David
Mr. Ray Powell and


Young, David (Bolton SE)
Mr. John McWilliam.


NOES


Adley, Robert
Farr, Sir John


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Favell, Anthony


Amess, David
Fletcher, Alexander


Ancram, Michael
Fookes, Miss Janet


Arnold, Tom
Forman, Nigel


Ashby, David
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Aspinwall, Jack
Forth, Eric


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Fox, Marcus


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Franks, Cecil


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Baldry, Tony
Freeman, Roger


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Gale, Roger


Batiste, Spencer
Galley, Roy


Bellingham, Henry
Gardiner, George (Reigate)


Bendall, Vivian
Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)


Benyon, William
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Best, Keith
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Goodhart, Sir Philip


Blackburn, John
Goodlad, Alastair


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Gorst, John


Body, Richard
Gow, Ian


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Gower, Sir Raymond


Bottomley, Peter
Greenway, Harry


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Gregory, Conal


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Ground, Patrick


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Grylls, Michael


Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard
Gummer, John Selwyn


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Brinton, Tim
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Hannam, John


Brooke, Hon Peter
Hargreaves, Kenneth


Browne, John
Harris, David


Bruinvels, Peter
Harvey, Robert


Bryan, Sir Paul
Haselhurst, Alan


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.
Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael


Budgen, Nick
Hawkins, C. (High Peak)


Bulmer, Esmond
Hawksley, Warren


Butcher, John
Hayes, J.


Butler, Hon Adam
Hayhoe, Barney


Butterfill, John
Hayward, Robert


Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S)
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Cash, William
Heddle, John


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Henderson, Barry


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Chapman, Sydney
Hickmet, Richard


Chope, Christopher
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Churchill, W. S.
Hind, Kenneth


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Holt, Richard


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Hordern, Peter


Clegg, Sir Walter
Howard, Michael


Cockeram, Eric
Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)


Colvin, Michael
Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)


Conway, Derek
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)


Coombs, Simon
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Cope, John
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Cranborne, Viscount
Irving, Charles


Critchley, Julian
Jackson, Robert


Crouch, David
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey


Dickens, Geoffrey
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Dorrell, Stephen
Jones, Robert (W Herts)


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward
Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith


Dunn, Robert
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine


Durant, Tony
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Dykes, Hugh
Key, Robert


Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
King, Rt Hon Tom


Eggar, Tim
Knight, Gregory (Derby N)


Emery, Sir Peter
Knowles, Michael


Evennett, David
Lamont, Norman


Eyre, Sir Reginald
Lawrence, Ivan






Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Lee, John (Pendle)
Roe, Mrs Marion


Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Rossi, Sir Hugh


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Rost, Peter


Lester, Jim
Rowe, Andrew


Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)
Rumbold, Mrs Angela


Lightbown, David
Ryder, Richard


Lilley, Peter
Sackville, Hon Thomas



Lloyd, Ian (Havant)
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)
St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.


Lord, Michael
Sayeed, Jonathan


Luce, Richard
Scott, Nicholas


Lyell, Nicholas
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


McCrindle, Robert
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


McCurley, Mrs Anna
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Macfarlane, Neil
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


MacGregor, John
Shersby, Michael


MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Sims, Roger


MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)
Skeet, T. H. H.


Maclean, David John
Soames, Hon Nicholas


McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)
Speed, Keith


McQuarrie, Albert
Speller, Tony


Major, John
Spence, John


Malins, Humfrey
Spencer, Derek


Malone, Gerald
Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)


Maples, John
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Marland, Paul
Squire, Robin


Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Mates, Michael
Stanley, John


Mather, Carol
Steen, Anthony


Maude, Hon Francis
Stern, Michael


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Mayhew, Sir Patrick
Stevens, Martin (Fulham)


Mellor, David
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Merchant, Piers
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Stradling Thomas, J.


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Sumberg, David


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Miscampbell, Norman
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Moate, Roger
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Monro, Sir Hector
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Moore, John
Terlezki, Stefan


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Moynihan, Hon C.
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Neale, Gerrard
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Needham, Richard
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Nelson, Anthony
Tracey, Richard


Neubert, Michael
Trippier, David


Newton, Tony
Twinn, Dr Ian


Nicholls, Patrick
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Norris, Steven
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Onslow, Cranley
Viggers, Peter


Oppenheim, Phillip
Waddington, David


Ottaway, Richard
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Page, Richard (Herts SW)
Waldegrave, Hon William


Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil
Walden, George


Patten, John (Oxford)
Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)


Pattie, Geoffrey
Waller, Gary


Pawsey, James
Walters, Dennis


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Watson, John



Pollock, Alexander
Watts, John


Portillo, Michael
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Powell, William (Corby)
Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)


Powley, John
Wheeler, John


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Whitney, Raymond


Price, Sir David
Wilkinson, John


Proctor, K. Harvey
Wolfson, Mark


Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Wood, Timothy


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Woodcock, Michael


Rathbone, Tim
Yeo, Tim


Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Renton, Tim



Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Tellers for the Noes:


Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Mr. Robert Boscawen and


Rifkind, Malcolm
Mr. Ian Lang.

Question accordingly negatived.

Main Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 41 (Amendment on Second or Third Reading):—

The House divided: Ayes 290, Noes 171.

Division No. 79]
[10.15 pm


AYES


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Farr, Sir John


Ancram, Michael
Favell, Anthony


Arnold, Tom
Fletcher, Alexander


Ashby, David
Fookes, Miss Janet


Aspinwall, Jack
Forman, Nigel


Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Fox, Marcus


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)
Franks, Cecil


Baldry, Tony
Fraser, Peter (Angus East)


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Freeman, Roger


Batiste, Spencer
Gale, Roger


Bellingham, Henry
Galley, Roy


Bendall, Vivian
Gardiner, George (Reigate)


Benyon, William
Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)


Best, Keith
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Blackburn, John
Goodhart, Sir Philip


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Goodlad, Alastair


Body, Richard
Gorst, John


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Gow, Ian


Bottomley, Peter
Gower, Sir Raymond


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Greenway, Harry


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Gregory, Conal


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Ground, Patrick


Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard
Grylls, Michael


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Gummer, John Selwyn


Brinton, Tim
Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Brooke, Hon Peter
Hannam, John


Browne, John
Hargreaves, Kenneth


Bruinvels, Peter
Harris, David


Bryan, Sir Paul
Harvey, Robert


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.
Haselhurst, Alan


Buck, Sir Antony
Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael


Bulmer, Esmond
Hawkins, C. (High Peak)


Butcher, John
Hayes, J.


Butler, Hon Adam
Hayhoe, Barney


Butterfill, John
Hayward, Robert



Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S)
Heathcoat-Amory, David


Cash, William
Heddle, John


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Henderson, Barry


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Chapman, Sydney
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L


Chope, Christopher
Hind, Kenneth


Churchill, W. S.
Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)
Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Holt, Richard


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Hordern, Peter


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Howard, Michael


Clegg, Sir Walter
Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)


Cockeram, Eric
Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)


Colvin, Michael
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)


Conway, Derek
Hubbard-Miles, Peter


Coombs, Simon
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Cope, John
Irving, Charles


Cranborne, Viscount
Jackson, Robert


Critchley, Julian
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


Crouch, David
Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Dickens, Geoffrey
Jones, Robert (W Herts)


Dorrell, Stephen
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith


du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine


Dunn, Robert
Kershaw, Sir Anthony


Durant, Tony
Key, Robert


Dykes, Hugh
King, Rt Hon Tom


Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)
Knight, Gregory (Derby N)


Eggar, Tim
Knowles, Michael


Emery, Sir Peter
Lamont, Norman


Evennett, David
Lawrence, Ivan


Eyre, Sir Reginald
Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel






Lee, John (Pendle)
Roe, Mrs Marion


Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Rossi, Sir Hugh


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Rost, Peter


Lester, Jim
Rowe, Andrew


Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)
Rumbold, Mrs Angela


Lightbown, David
Ryder, Richard


Lilley, Peter
Sackville, Hon Thomas


Lloyd, Ian (Havant)
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)
St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.


Lord, Michael
Sayeed, Jonathan


Luce, Richard
Scott, Nicholas


Lyell, Nicholas
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


McCrindle, Robert
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


McCurley, Mrs Anna
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Macfarlane, Neil
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


MacGregor, John
Shersby, Michael


MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Sims, Roger


MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)
Skeet, T. H. H.


Maclean, David John
Soames, Hon Nicholas


McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)
Speed, Keith


McQuarrie, Albert
Speller, Tony


Major, John
Spence, John


Malone, Gerald
Spencer, Derek


Maples, John
Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)


Marland, Paul
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Squire, Robin


Mates, Michael
Stanbrook, Ivor



Mather, Carol
Stanley, John


Maude, Hon Francis
Steen, Anthony


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Stern, Michael


Mayhew, Sir Patrick
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


Mellor, David
Stevens, Martin (Fulham)


Merchant, Piers
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Stradling Thomas, J.


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Sumberg, David


Miscampbell, Norman
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Moate, Roger
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Monro, Sir Hector
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Moore, John
Terlezki, Stefan


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Moynihan, Hon C.
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Neale, Gerrard
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Needham, Richard
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Nelson, Anthony
Tracey, Richard


Neubert, Michael
Trippier, David


Newton, Tony
Twinn, Dr Ian


Nicholls, Patrick
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Norris, Steven
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Onslow, Cranley
Viggers, Peter


Oppenheim, Phillip
Waddington, David


Ottaway, Richard
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Page, Richard (Herts SW)
Waldegrave, Hon William


Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil
Walden, George


Patten, John (Oxford)
Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)


Pattie, Geoffrey
Waller, Gary


Pawsey, James
Walters, Dennis


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Wardle, C. (Bexhill)


Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Watson, John


Pollock, Alexander
Watts, John


Portillo, Michael
Wells, Bowen (Hertford)


Powell, William (Corby)
Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)


Powley, John
Wheeler, John


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Whitney, Raymond


Price, Sir David
Wilkinson, John


Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Wolfson, Mark


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Wood, Timothy


Rathbone, Tim
Woodcock, Michael


Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)
Yeo, Tim


Renton, Tim
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon



Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Tellers for the Ayes:


Rifkind, Malcolm
Mr. Robert Boscawen and


Robinson, Mark (N'port W)
Mr. Ian Lang.


NOES


Abse, Leo
Archer, Rt Hon Peter


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Ashton, Joe


Anderson, Donald
Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)





Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
John, Brynmor


Barnett, Guy
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Barron, Kevin
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Beith, A. J.
Lamond, James


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
Leadbitter, Ted


Bermingham, Gerald
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Boyes, Roland
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Lofthouse, Geoffrey


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Loyden, Edward


Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)
McCartney, Hugh


Bruce, Malcolm
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Buchan, Norman
McKay, Allen (Penistone)


Budgen, Nick
McKelvey, William


Caborn, Richard
Mackenzie, Rt Hon Gregor


Campbell, Ian
Maclennan, Robert


Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)
McNamara, Kevin


Cartwright, John
McTaggart, Robert


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Madden, Max


Clarke, Thomas
Malins, Humfrey


Clay, Robert
Marek, Dr John


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Mason, Rt Hon Roy


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)
Maxton, John


Cohen, Harry
Meacher, Michael


Cook, Frank (Stockton North)
Meadowcroft, Michael


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
Michie, William


Corbett, Robin
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Cowans, Harry
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James


Cox, Thomas (Tooting)
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Crowther, Stan
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Nellist, David


Dalyell, Tam
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
O'Brien, William


Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)
Owen, Rt Hon Dr David


Deakins, Eric
Park, George


Dewar, Donald
Patchett, Terry


Dixon, Donald
Pendry, Tom


Dobson, Frank
Penhaligon, David


Dormand, Jack
Pike, Peter


Douglas, Dick
Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)


Dubs, Alfred
Prescott, John


Duffy, A. E. P.
Proctor, K. Harvey


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Radice, Giles


Eadie, Alex
Randall, Stuart


Eastham, Ken
Redmond, M.


Evans, John (St. Helens N)
Richardson, Ms Jo


Fatchett, Derek
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Faulds, Andrew
Robertson, George


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)
Rogers, Allan


Fisher, Mark
Rowlands, Ted


Flannery, Martin
Sedgemore, Brian


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Sheerman, Barry


Forrester, John
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Foster, Derek
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Foulkes, George
Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)


Fraser, J. (Norwood)
Short, Mrs R.(W'hampt'n NE)


Freud, Clement
Silkin, Rt Hon J.


George, Bruce
Silvester, Fred


Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Skinner, Dennis


Golding, John
Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)


Gould, Bryan
Snape, Peter


Gourlay, Harry
Soley, Clive


Grist, Ian
Spearing, Nigel




Hamilton, James (M'well N)
Stott, Roger


Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Strang, Gavin


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Straw, Jack


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Taylor, Rt Hon John David


Haynes, Frank
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Heffer, Eric S.
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)


Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)
Thorne, Stan (Preston)


Home Robertson, John
Tinn, James


Howells, Geraint
Torney, Tom


Hoyle, Douglas
Wallace, James


Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Wareing, Robert


Hughes, Roy (Newport East)
Weetch, Ken


Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)
Welsh, Michael






White, James



Wiggin, Jerry
Tellers for the Noes:


Williams, Rt Hon A.
Mr. John McWilliam and


Winnick, David
Mr. Ray Powell.


Young, David (Bolton SE)

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a Second time and committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 42 (Committal of Bills).

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the Brunei and Maldives Bill [Lords] may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour. —[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

EDUCATION (CORPORAL PUNISHMENT) BILL [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Education (Corporal Punishment) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other Act.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

Orders of the Day — Brunei and Maldives Bill [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Tim Renton): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of the Bill, which has been approved in another place, is to make minor amendments to certain United Kingdom enactments to take account of the recently acquired status of Brunei and the Maldives as members of the Commonwealth. It will have no effect on the laws of Brunei and the Maldives.
Britain's historical connections with those two countries are particularly interesting. The sultanate of Brunei first entered special treaty relations with the United Kingdom in 1846 and subsequently enjoyed the status of a protected state until 1971. Subsequently, the United Kingdom continued to exercise direct responsibility for Brunei's external relations until 31 December 1983. On that date, Brunei resumed her status as a sovereign and independent state and was admitted to the Commonwealth with effect from 1 January 1984.
Britain's connections with the Maldives date back to the 18th century when, on taking possession of Ceylon, we extended our protection to the Maldives. In 1948, the Maldives were granted self-government, but the United Kingdom continued to maintain control of their external relations. In 1965, the Maldives became a fully independent sovereign state outside the Commonwealth but were admitted to the Commonwealth, at their own request, as a special member in July 1982.
Brunei and the Maldives are thus united in their membership of the Commonwealth. They are both small in area and in population and predominately Moslem, but in many respects they are strikingly different and they have their own roles to play.
As the House knows, Brunei has been endowed with abundant resources of petroleum and natural gas. The associated revenues make her one of the wealthiest nations in Asia, with substantial foreign reserves. She is actively developing an individual foreign policy commensurate with her economic strength as a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth and the Association of South-East Asian Nations. Brunei is already playing her part with her ASEAN partners — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand — in contributing towards promoting stability in south-east Asia.
At a time when Brunei has been taking up her international role in the United Nations and within ASEAN, we are particularly proud of the fact that she has elected to join the Commonwealth and will continue to maintain her close traditional ties with the United Kingdom. We attach importance to assisting in the continued development of Brunei. Britain has long provided teachers and other experts for Brunei, and about 2,000 Brunei students are studying in Britain. We retain major investments in the Brunei economy, particularly in the vital energy sector. We are a major trading partner.
Through those various channels we keep in the closest contact with modern day Brunei, thus preserving a tradition extending back for more than a century. Then, as now, both Brunei and we have benefited from our happy association.
The Maldives, on the other hand, have been endowed with one of the most idyllic locations in the Commonwealth, as an ever-increasing number of British tourists are finding out for themselves. As Lord Alport was moved to say in another place:
You will certainly find there a very hospitable, very delightful and very attractive people to meet and you will find as well charming islands and a charming environment."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 November 1984; Vol. 457, c. 513.]
We remember with much pleasure that President Gayoom made a successful visit to Britain in May 1982, as a guest of the Government, during which he called on the Prime Minister, lunched with Her Majesty the Queen and announced the Maldives' application for membership of the Commonwealth. We were pleased to welcome him back to London in June 1984 and were delighted that he was able to address the Royal Commonwealth Society conference on the important and appropriate subject of small states in the Commonwealth.
Our long association with Brunei and the Maldives has made our relationship with both particularly close. It remains so now that they are independent, as was demonstrated by the warm reception that the Bill received in another place. Many noble Lords described their connections with both Brunei and the Maldives and expressed their good wishes to both countries.
I know that those sentiments are shared by many hon. Members on both sides of the House. In particular, I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris), who is sorry that he cannot be here, has expressed personal interest in, and support for, the Bill.
Therefore, it gives us great pleasure to welcome the admission of Brunei and the Maldives to the Commonwealth—a process on which the Bill puts the seal. We are confident that we shall continue to build on our long-standing friendship with both countries.
The amendments which the Bill makes to United Kingdom enactments follow the precedents of the Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa and Nauru (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1980 and the New Hebrides Act 1980. These precedents relate to countries which, like Brunei and the Maldives, required only such legislative provision as was consequent on their accession to membership of the Commonwealth.
In the case of former British colonies, the relevant independence Act passed on the achievement of independence, and almost simultaneous accession to the Commonwealth, includes these necessary amendments to other United Kingdom legislation which place the state on the same footing as other Commonwealth countries. However, both Brunei and the Maldives have achieved full sovereignty and membership of the Commonwealth without the need for such an independence Act.
Clause 1 and the schedule provide for the necessary modification of United Kingdom enactments. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the schedule provide for amendments to section 427(2) of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 and to the Whaling Industry (Regulation) Act 1934. Because nationals of Brunei and the Maldives will be brought within the definition of "British subjects" in enactments passed before the coming into force of the 1981 Act, it is necessary to amend the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 and

the Whaling Industry (Regulation) Act 1934 in such a way as to exclude Brunei and the Maldives from their application.
Paragraph 3 of the schedule provides for an amendment to the Imperial Institute Act, as amended by the Commonwealth Institute Act 1958. Brunei and the Maldives will thereby be included as countries which may be represented on the board of governors who are consulted when arrangements for the Commonwealth Institute are changed.
Paragraphs 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the schedule provide for amendments to Acts relating to Commonwealth forces and their discipline while on visits to the United Kingdom. These amendments make provisions for forces raised in Brunei and the Maldives similar to those which apply to forces raised in other Commonwealth countries.
Paragraph 8 provides for an amendment to the British Nationality Act 1981. The Maldives will be added to the list of Commonwealth countries under schedule 3 of that Act. Paragraph 8 applies to the Maldives only. The similar consequential change with regard to Brunei has already been effected by Order in Council.
I am sure that all hon. Members will wish to join Her Majesty's Government in welcoming the Bill. Although the amendments which it introduces have practical implications in only limited fields, they are changes which should be made if nationals of Brunei and the Maldives are to be given their proper Commonwealth status in this country.

Mr. Donald Anderson: The Minister's warm words of welcome are shared by Opposition Members. It is a pleasant surprise of our Commonwealth history that two such different territories can be brought together in one Bill. It illustrates the unique nature of the historical development of our colonial or, in this case, quasi-colonial past.
Both countries, as the Minister said in what one might describe as his fascinating history lesson, went through a period as British protectorates, and for a time we were responsible for the external relations in both countries; both are somewhat artificial in geographic terms; both have populations fewer than 200,000 people; both are mainly Islamic in religion; and both have historic links with our military forces—one thinks of the problems we had in the mid-1970s in our relationship with Gan and of the Gurkha detachment in Brunei.
The similarities between the two territories end there. The Maldives with their 20 coral atolls depend on fishing and are relatively poor. Brunei with its oil wealth is per capita one of the richest countries in Asia. Brunei has, however, a number of problems. Behind the wealth and apparent stability there is, as I am sure most friends and observers note, a need to modernise its political structures. The elective parts of the constitution have been in abeyance for some time. Sadly, Brunei has a number of political prisoners. Brunei faces the problem faced by most Islamic countries—the need to work out its relationship, in terms of its laws and so on, in line with the new radical impulse of Islam.
Recently, there were difficult negotiations over the future of the Gurkhas. It would be helpful if the Under-Secretary of State explained whether there are any circumstances in which the Gurkha battalions — still under the control of the Ministry of Defence—could be


used for internal purposes. In 1962, the Gurkhas were used to suppress the rebellion which followed the success of the Brunei People's party in the only democratic elections held in the territory in 1961. In another place, Lady Young, speaking on behalf of the Government, said that the presence of the Gurkhas contributed to the stability of Brunei and of the surrounding area. Is the Minister confident that the guidelines are sufficiently clear? Is he confident that, in an internal emergency, there would be no misunderstanding between Britain and the Sultan about the role that the Gurkhas can play at such a time?
There is much that is positive about development in the Maldives and Brunei and much that is to the credit of the Sultan's Government in terms of the development of welfare services and looking ahead to the period when the oil runs out. The Brunei people will then need to depend very much on their own resources, particularly agriculture. The fact that there is a lack of personal income tax makes other people in other countries jealous of Brunei.
The problem in Brunei is not shortage of cash but the lack of the trained human resources which are necessary for the development of that country. There is a shortage of key personnel and a need for technical assistance. I am pleased to note how much our Government and the Governments of neighbouring Commonwealth countries have done to assist Brunei in its technical development. The Under-Secretary of State referred to the fact that there are about 2,000 students from Brunei in Britain. It is especially gratifying to note that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Malaysia and Singapore have given a helping hand to Brunei in training diplomatic personnel and in introducing Brunei, step by step, to international organisations. We are confident that that co-operation within the Commonwealth can be further developed.
As the Minister has said, the Bill is relatively minor and technical. It marks the fact that both territories have achieved their independence in a mood rather different from that to which we are accustomed with the majority of our Commonwealth countries. Hence, the Bill makes minor consequential changes to United Kingdom law, making a formality of the end of the quasi-dependent relationship. For example, under paragraph 8 of the schedule, the addition of the Maldives to the countries whose citizens are defined as Commonwealth citizens under the British Nationality Act 1981 will make no practical difference to that country.
We look forward to welcoming the two territories to full Commonwealth status, and we shall do all that we can to make them full members of the Commonwealth family. It is good to know that they see advantages in joining the Commonwealth. It illustrates the diversity which is, perhaps, the strength of the Commonwealth connection.
I understand that as yet no application has been made by either territory to join the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, but I am confident of their eventual membership. They will be welcome in that organisation. We wish both countries well. We look forward to continued co-operation within the Commonwealth family to our mutual benefit.

Mr. A. J. Beith: Our welcome is no less enthusiastic for the Bill and the accession to the Commonwealth of these two states. I shall not emulate my noble Friend Lord Tanlaw who, when the matter was

discussed in another place, was able to point to the fact that three generations of his family, culminating in his grandfather, had been made hereditary rulers of Sarawak by the Sultan of Borneo in the 19th century, an arrangement which lasted well into this century. I make no such claim.
I emphasise our enthusiastic support for Brunei's accession to the Commonwealth and for British relations with Brunei. There is a well-established trading relationship and Brunei has an increasing stake in the British economy. Strong trading relations must be maintained between our countries.
Brunei is the 49th full member of the Commonwealth. I hope that it will not be long before similar legislation is before us to welcome the 50th, which should be Namibia. The sooner the better, because that story has been going on for too long. The Maldives have been independent since 1965 and have special membership of the Commonwealth, enjoying all the benefits of membership without being involved in Heads of Government meetings. Both countries are small states, within the normal definition of that term, and 70 per cent. of the smaller states are members of the Commonwealth. Both must be aware that small, while being beautiful, can also mean being vulnerable. The matter of vulnerability was thrown into sharp relief by the Grenada crisis.
The Commonwealth Heads of Government have set in train a study of the special needs of small states including their defence and economic needs. The presence of the Gurkhas in Brunei and Brunei's interest in the protection of its territory has been mentioned.
We must also be aware of the economic vulnerability of the Maldives. It is a poor country, and we hope that it will benefit from the tourism, to which the Minister referred, and strong links with and support from Britain. Interest has been expressed about the development of permanent trade and political representation in London. We hope that that will come about.
The hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) mentioned the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. It has published a report on the security of small states and has explored the Commonwealth dimension in that. We must all hope that those ideas can be developed.
The Commonwealth is an extraordinary community of nations to which those two have been added. It covers more than one third of the world's population and one third of the nations with membership of the United Nations. The fact that on achieving independence so many of those territories have chosen freely to become members of the Commonwealth is remarkable and a great tribute to the Commonwealth's potential and possibilities.
There are links of language, culture, history and shared institutions, but we in Britain must remember how much we have to do to sustain that connection, and the arrival of two more states within the Commonwealth in recent years, of which this Bill is the culmination, should remind us of that. In all Government policy, whether we are talking about overseas students, broadcasting services to the Commonwealth or other policies, we must remember our side of the commitment to the Commonwealth and how much that should imbue every aspect of Government policy. We also hope that involvement in the Commonwealth will be the means of widening and spreading democracy in all its members.

Mr. Renton: I thank the hon. Members for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) for their interesting contributions to our short debate. The hon. Member for Swansea, East referred to the disparity between the two countries covered by the Bill. He was quite right, but what is interesting—the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed picked up this theme—is the fact that, despite that disparity, those two countries are now united not only in that both are independent and have a long association with this country but also in their membership of the Commonwealth. That is a striking feature of the Commonwealth.
Like the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, I read the speech made by Lord Tanlaw. It would be hard for any hon. Member of this House to emulate the close four-generation connection of the Brooke family with the development of Brunei, but what we can do is to show the high regard in which we hold the two countries in question. That is a tribute to the friendship between the United Kingdom and Brunei and the Maldives, and bodes well for our future relations.
The hon. Member for Swansea, East referred to the question of the Gurkhas. The Gurkha battalion is being retained in Brunei at the request of the Sultan. He believes —as do Her Majesty's Government—that its presence contributes to the stability of Brunei and the surrounding area. Other members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations have shown their understanding of the arrangement. The arrangement is also beneficial to the United Kingdom in that the battalion is found in rotation from the Hong Kong garrison and has, in Brunei, opportunities for training that are unavailable in Hong Kong. The battalion remains an integral part of the British Army, under the operational control of the Ministry of Defence. It is the intention that the battalion will normally remain in Brunei.
The Governments of the United Kingdom and of Brunei are committed to consult on matters of mutual concern under their treaty of friendship and co-operation of 1979. There should therefore be no possibility of misunderstanding such as the hon. Member for Swansea, East feared.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed rightly referred to the special needs of small states. That is a singularly appropriate point in reference to the Maldives. He will be pleased to note the encouraging progress made with the study commissioned at the 1983 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in New Delhi, which the British Government continue strongly to support. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office made an initial contribution to the study for the Commonwealth Secretariat in June 1984 and our memorandum, published by the Select Committee in July, is the fullest statement

to date of British policy in that area. The committee that was set up continues to make its inquiries and undertake its research, and we await with great interest the conclusions of the study.
It is probably worth stating that our basic approach is to emphasise the objective of prevention rather than cure, through greater regional co-operation by the small states themselves, the provision of technical assistance and training assistance for the armed and police forces, an active information policy, the promotion of political and cultural links and the maintenance of an adequate diplomatic presence in as many small states as possible. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed spoke in moving terms about the development towards democracy in many countries throughout the world and how many of them have become members of the Commonwealth. I am sure that the whole House wishes to welcome these two countries as members of the Commonwealth. I should like all hon. Members present to join me in expressing our desire that our close friendship with Brunei and the Maldives should be long and fruitful. We are proud to see them as fellow members of the Commonwealth and it is in that vein that I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Lang.]
Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without amendment.
Bill read the Third time and passed, without amendment.

BANKRUPTCY (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords]

Ordered,
That the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Bill [Lords] may be proceeded with as if it had been certified by Mr. Speaker as relating exclusively to Scotland.—[Mr. Lang.]

BANKRUPTCY (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords]

Order for Second reading read.
Ordered,
That the Bill be referred to the Scottish Grand Committee. —[Mr. Lang.]

FAMILY LAW (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords]

Ordered,
That the Family Law (Scotland) Bill [Lords] may be proceeded with as if it had been certified by Mr. Speaker as relating exclusively to Scotland.—[Mr. Lang.]

FAMILY LAW (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords]

Order for Second Reading read.
Ordered,
That the Bill be referred to the Scottish Grand Committee. —[Mr. Lang.]

Orders of the Day — VE Day (40th Anniversary)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lang.]

Mr. John Cartwright: I am glad of this opportunity to discuss in more detail than has hitherto been possible the celebration of the 40th anniversary of VE day.
I welcome the fact that the Government appear to have changed their earlier attitude. I tabled a question to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in November last year, asking about the details of the anniversary celebrations. I was shocked to get a curt and peremptory reply from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, which ran:
We have no present plans for any official British celebration of this anniversary."—[Official Report, 27 November 1984; Vol. 68, c. 453.]
That struck me as unacceptable, so I pursued the matter by letter with the Foreign Secretary and eventually received a reply from the noble Lady, the Minister of State, which caused some consternation when it was published a couple of weeks ago. The most surprising and, to me, disappointing comment in that letter was her conclusion that the celebration of the 40th Anniversary of VE day, such as I had suggested, would be
at best nostalgic and at worst anti-German".
It may be my advancing years, but I cannot see much wrong with nostalgia, especially nostalgia for a momentous event in the lives of many people. It has become clear that many of our colleagues in the Federal Republic of Germany are not opposed to the idea of celebrating the 40th anniversary of VE day. Many of my friends there have made it clear that they are as anxious as any one else to celebrate the end of the Nazi regime. They point out,. with considerable justification, that the first victims of the regime were Germans. They are glad to celebrate the sort of things which we have in mind.
I endorse what the Prime Minister has said and share her objectives in commemorating the 40th anniversary of VE day. As I understand it, she is saying that we should first pay tribute to those who gave their lives during the war. That is absolutely right. It is also right to emphasise the reconciliation that has taken place between ourselves and the nations that were our traditional enemies in Europe. We should celebrate 40 years of peace in Europe. We should give thanks for the new Europe which emerged from the old at the end of the war and in which nations which were for generations at each other's throats are now close allies. All those matters are worth celebrating.
I also wish to refer to VJ Day. I have received many letters from people who say, "We were the forgotten army in the far east. Do not let us be the forgotten army again at any celebrations". That is a fair point. I do not know whether it would be better to combine celebrations of the end of the war in the far east with celebrations of the end of war in Europe, or to have a simple, separate and wholly appropriate celebration at the appropriate time. Whatever we do, we must not give the impression that everything finished with the war in Europe and overlook the contribution of our countrymen who fought in the far east.
I wish to urge some aims and motives on the Government and to make some sensible suggestions. First, I wish to see the broadest possible celebrations and commemorations in the United Kingdom. Secondly, I

hope that whatever we organise will be genuinely international in character and involve both our former enemies and allies.
The events should involve ordinary people. Ordinary families bore the brunt of the war and made the sacrifices demanded by it. Celebrations should not, therefore, be limited to national leaders, to the great and the good, but should involve a broad cross-section of ordinary people. We should seek the participation of the veterans of the war to whom we owe so much.
I hope, however, that we shall also try to involve young people. They have benefited from the peace, and our future depends on them. They sometimes fail to understand what the war was about, and how much we owe to those who fought it on our behalf. I hope that celebrations will not be limited to a national event at Westminster abbey or the Cenotaph, important though such a function may be. It would be a tragedy if the commemoration were London dominated. There must be local events, such as church services, which make clear the contributions of all communities, towns and villages, to the war effort.
I hope that the commemoration will be seen not simply as a solemn and serious occasion. It should undoubtedly have its solemn and serious content. However, my abiding recollection of VE day in 1945 is of street parties. I still feel the great sense of relief that the war was over. Street parties are part of our folklore. The ability to organise them passes from generation to generation. We do not do that often enough. We tend to do it on great occasions, such as coronations and jubilees. The 40th anniversary of VE day is a good basis on which to organise street parties. I know from my postbag that much work is being done in many communities, and I hope that the Government and local authorities will do all they can to encourage such a popular celebration.
This was not just a national war; it was a war that involved several of our allies. I have already mentioned the need for reconciliation and the need for the involvement of the Federal Republic of Germany and, indeed, the German Democratic Republic, if it wishes to be involved. We must also involve our allies, and the Americans will be an important element in the celebrations. I say that with self-interest, because I grew up in Lincoln during the war and I remember that Lincoln was surrounded by Royal Air Force and United States Air Force bases. Many Americans gave their lives, not only in the air force but in other forces, for our future in Europe. Clearly, Commonwealth nations should also have the opportunity to take part.
Perhaps the most controversial suggestion is that we should seek to involve the Soviet Union in the celebrations. There has been a suspicion that the Soviet Union will be restricted to ambassadorial involvement. I would not support such an approach, which would be a cold and formal involvement. I was interested to see the letter of 12 December from Lord Carrington to Mr. Martin Dent of the University of Keele, in which he endorsed the idea of an international celebration. He said:
I have much sympathy with the view that it would be right to plan the celebrations in a way which emphasises the reconciliation between those combatants who are now partners in the Atlantic Alliance and the hopes which we all have for a more constructive relationship with the Soviet Union.
We should aim to achieve that in our commemoration of the 40th anniversary of VE day.
I say that ambassadorial involvement will not be sufficient, because there was, and still is, an understanding in Britain of the extraordinary contribution of the Russian people to the winning of the second world war, and there is a case for a much more imaginative involvement of the Soviet people in the commemoration of the peace. It has been suggested that the sword of Stalingrad, which was forged in Britain as a token of the respect and admiration of the British people for the defence of Stalingrad, should return to Britain for display. That would be worth pursuing.
The most obvious example of British and American co-operation with the Soviet Union during the war were the Arctic convoys of British and United States merchant ships carrying desperately needed war materials to the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1943. Those convoys were concentrated in the winter months to take advantage of the bad weather and the darkness of the Arctic night in order to hamper Nazi attacks on the ships. The conditions must have been appalling, and many British and American lives were lost in the effort to supply the Soviet Union. By the end of 1942, 219 ships had reached Murmansk, but no fewer than 64 had been sunk. The convoy operation was a heavy burden on Britain. The responsibility of defending the ships against German aircraft and U-boats fell on Britain, and there was also the problem of providing the desperately needed equipment. By the end of 1942, Britain had provided no fewer than 1,793 tanks and 1,988 aircraft —far more than even the United States provided—and Britain's resources were clearly strained.
Sir Winston Churchill, in his history of the second world war, said:
We gave our heart's blood resolutely to our valiant, suffering ally.
That episode in British-Soviet relations is worth recalling when we commemorate VE day. A reunion of survivors from all three nations would be a fitting part of any celebration, and perhaps one could organise a naval exchange, with ships from all three nations visiting each other's ports.
Another aspect of Anglo-Soviet co-operation that is worth recalling is the Aid to Russia Fund, launched in 1941 by the Red Cross and the Order of St. John. Mrs. Churchill, as she then was, the wife of the Prime Minister, accepted an invitation to head the organisation. Her first appeal was issued in October 1941. It was a very moving appeal. In that appeal Mrs. Churchill said:
There is no one in this country whose heart has not been deeply stirred by the appalling drama now going on in Russia. We are amazed at the power of the Russian defence and at the skill with which it is conducted. We have been moved to profound admiration for the valour, the tenacity and the patriotic self-sacrifice of the Russian people. And above all, perhaps, we have been shaken with horrow and pity at the vast scale of human suffering.
That appeal, which was targeted to launch £1 million, was much more successful than that. Contributions came in from all sources. Lord Nuffield gave £50,000 to the appeal. The King and the Queen gave £1,000 specifically to assist the Russians. In fact, nearly £8 million was raised, the bulk of it in weekly subscriptions from ordinary people. To quote again from Sir Winston Churchill's official history:
Thus through the powerful organisation of the Red Cross and St. John's and in spite of heavy losses in the Arctic convoys

medical and surgical supplies and all kinds of comforts and special appliances found their way in unbroken flow through the icy and deadly seas to the valiant Russian armies and people.
That kind of achievement is worth recalling, perhaps by a reunion of those who helped to raise the money and organise the assistance with those in the Soviet Union who benefited from it.
Perhaps one might be more positive and suggest that we could commemorate the Aid to Russia fund by trying to found a new Anglo-Soviet fund to finance much needed medical projects in the Third world. Whatever we do, we should not lose this opportunity which the commemoration of VE day gives us to try to improve relations with the Soviet Union. That is very much of a motivating force now in British foreign policy. I suggest that there could be no better way to improve relationships than by trying to rekindle that spirit of co-operation that existed 40 years ago.
These suggestions are by no means intended to be exclusive. They represent some of the ideas that have been put to me by people in various parts of the country from all political persuasions. I perfectly understand that there may be many other ideas that are well worth pursuing, but if the 40th anniversary of VE day is to be commemorated it should certainly not be a half-hearted operation. It really should be in keeping with the momentous impact of the second world war and the personal sacrifice that that war demanded. It is in that sense that I commend these ideas to the Government and look forward with great interest to the Minister's reaction.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. John Lee): I welcome the opportunity presented by the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright) in initiating this debate to explain a little more fully the Government's thinking on this very important issue. I know of his early and genuine interest in VE day—it is perhaps fitting that the hon. Member's constituency has such an historic military connection. I visited Woolwich myself last September and I know that during the second world war the royal ordnance factory at Woolwich suffered 25 separate air raids. Despite this, the factory produced 11,000 artillery pieces, 14 million shells and no fewer than 1,350 million rounds of small arms ammunition—a truly remarkable achievement.
We have stated on a number of occasions that we have decided that the 40th anniversary of the end of the second world war should be marked by a national commemoration. We are particularly conscious of the high degree of public interest that there has been on this question and understand and sympathise with the feelings that have been expressed.
We are still considering the form that the commemoration should take and a number of options are being closely studied: I am sorry, therefore, that I cannot be specific tonight. A service of thanksgiving is one option that has been widely canvassed and we are sympathetic to the opportunity this would give for those who gave their lives to be honoured and for the spirit of peace and reconciliation to be stressed.
In planning the commemorations we are also carefully considering the nature and extent of representation from other countries. We shall, of course, take into account the


views that have been expressed to us from various quarters, including those of the hon. Gentleman, before taking any decisions.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has already announced that there will be many representatives of foreign and Commonwealth Governments to whom we shall extend invitations to take part in the commemoration, either as high commissioners or as ambassadors, including those from the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union.
We shall, of course, wish to ensure that this does not become a divisive issue, or give grounds for offence to our allies, past or present. As the Prime Minister has said, we shall need to consult widely before determining the form of the occasion and before making final decisions.
We shall, as always, remember the contribution made by our allies in the second world war and our joint victory over tyranny — not least immense Soviet achievement and sacrifice. The USSR, we must remember, lost over 20 million dead in the second world war.
However, as the Prime Minister said in the House on 15 January, we shall aim in the commemoration to focus not only on the anniversaries but on the achievements of the last 40 years in preserving peace with freedom. We shall, of course, have very much in mind the reconstruction and reconciliation that has been achieved in this time. As we approach this 40th anniversary of the end of the second world war we are mindful that our adversaries at that time are now our allies, and are conscious of the considerable efforts that have been made to build constructively on the sacrifices of the war years and the achievement of reconciliation.
Concern has been expressed as to what the attitude of our close ally the Federal Republic of Germany will be to our holding VE day commemorations.
I should like to set out Chancellor Kohl's approach as spelt out at the press conference following the Prime Minister's recent meeting with him. I quote:
I explained to the Prime Minister the specific psychological situation in the Federal Republic and I explained to her that two thirds of the population alive in the Federal Republic today do not, from their own experience, remember the terrible things that happened under the Hitler regime, because they were born after it, and it is important, therefore, for us to commemorate this day in being aware of the history of our people and remembering the terrible things that were done in the name of Germany, but is also—in this sense for us a day of liberation and at the same time we must remember all the suffering and all the dead, and so when we commemorate this we commemorate this date by turning inwards and thinking about our past and our future.
It is also important in remembering this zero hour in German history, we should remember the fact that the chance which was offered us at that time was used. We built up the Federal Republic and we have contributed to maintaining peace and freedom and progress for 40 years, and that is the very great achievement of the generation before us, and of course, in all this we must always think back to the by now almost legendary speech of Winston Churchill which he delivered in Zurich, which helped to lay the foundation for this future development.
Those were Chancellor Kohl's words.
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear after her discussions with Chancellor Kohl, we see 1945 as a year which saw a new rebirth of freedom; a freedom which we must preserve for future generations.
I should also stress, and this will be reflected in the tone of the occasion, that VE day did not mark the end of the second world war and our commemorations will focus on

the ending of the war both in Europe and in the far east and on the heroic sacrifice of the allied forces in all theatres.
Hon. Members have expressed the view in this House that those who fought in the far east should not be forgotten. I can reassure them that the gallantry those men displayed and the suffering and privations that they underwent are not forgotten; and that they will be equally honoured in our commemorations.
However, the hon. Gentleman has specifically referred in this short debate to Victory in Europe day, and I believe it would be appropriate to spend a few moments considering the events that have followed that victory.
In 1945 Europe had been torn apart by the devastating conflict that had embroiled its nations for six years. This year we are able to celebrate 40 years of continuous peace in Europe. It is not by chance that the longest period of peace in Europe this century has coincided with the existence of the Atlantic Alliance.
The overriding purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is the preservation of the principles of freedom and democracy. Its strength lies in the determination of its signatories to do all in their power to safeguard peace and international security, and in their willingness to work together in a wholly defensive alliance. It is a measure of the remarkable success that NATO has had in meeting its objectives that the 35 years of its existence have been marked by an unbroken period of peace in Europe. This has been at a time when we have been faced with the advent of weapons of unprecedented power. There has been conflict and unrest in one or more parts of the world more or less throughout the entire period, and there has been no weakening, indeed the opposite, in the challenge posed by the Soviet Union and her Warsaw Pact allies.
What, then, has been the key to the continued effectiveness of our transatlantic Alliance? There have, of course been difficulties and differences of opinion—this is natural in an alliance of independent nations. But it is the main strength of NATO that its members, with common aims and interests, can discuss and resolve their problems together. NATO is an association of free states, joined together to preserve their security by collective self-defence, and to strengthen peace by means of constructive dialogue. Our solidarity does not conflict with the ability of each country to pursue its own policies. We are a partnership of equals, with none dominant and none dominated, but we are committed to close consultation and co-operation in pursuit of our successful aims.
In addition to guaranteeing our security, we of course see the need to build the foundations of lasting peace, to develop balanced East-West relations and to contribute to peaceful progress worldwide. We shall continue to pursue these ends with our allies in NATO.
Probably three fifths of our population were born after the end of the Second World War, including many hon. Members of this House. I myself was born midway through the war in 1942. It is as easy for my own and following generations to forget the tyranny, the inhumanity, the bloodshed, the destruction and the suffering of the conflict as it is to be unaware of the fortitude, the courage and the bravery demonstrated by our forces and civilians and by those of our allies.
The peace and freedom which we in the West enjoy was not won easily and must never be taken for granted. We in this country have so much to be thankful for.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes past Eleven o'clock.